Children who have no smokers in their families but who reside in apartment buildings have higher levels of cotinine, a by-product of tobacco smoke, in their blood than similar children who dwell in detached, single-family homes, a new study in the journal Pediatrics finds. After surveying and taking blood samples of children between the ages of 6 and 18 from 2001 to 2006 who live in smoke-free homes, study author Dr. Jonathan Winickoff of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston found that children living in apartments have higher blood levels of tobacco smoke contaminants.
According to Dr. Nanci Yuan, associate clinical professor at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University in California, “This article highlights the far reaching negative impact of smoking not only on the smoker[s] themselves and their close contact, but also impacts and burdens the health of their neighbors and the community as a whole.”
Dr. Winickoff hopes his study will be a call to action for regulators to start limiting secondhand exposure in homes or ban indoor smoking entirely from public housing.
Yet ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross asks: “I hate to be politically incorrect, since we here at ACSH are against any type of smoking, but what negative impact is Dr. Yuan referring to exactly? The mere presence of the tobacco breakdown product cotinine is not directly related to adverse health effects.”
“While tobacco smoke may seep into neighboring apartments through ventilation and shared walls, and while I have nothing against smoke-free housing, I’d like to know exactly what levels of cotinine were found to be in the children studied,” wonders Dr. Ross. “Was their exposure comparable to what would be observed after walking through a cloud of smoke outside of a restaurant, or is it more consistent with someone who lives with a two- pack per day smoker?”