Passive smoking
May 2007
Environmental tobacco smoke and cardiovascular disease
- Non-smokers who breathe secondhand smoke (SHS) have between a 25% to 30% increase in risk of CHD.1
- SHS interferes with the normal functioning of the heart, blood, and vascular systems in ways that increase the risk of a cardiac event.1
- Even short exposures to SHS cause immediate changes that can lead to a CVD event.2
- Short exposures to SHS can cause the blood to become stickier, damage the lining of blood vessels, alter the way the blood is pumped around the body, and alter the way the heart beats, potentially increasing the risk of a heart attack.1
- Passive smoking is capable of precipitating acute manifestations of CVD.3
- Exposure to SHS increases considerably the risk of recurrent events in patients who had survived a cardiac event.4
- There is a 30% excess risk of ischemic heart disease (IHD) in nonsmokers whose spouses smoke compared with that in nonsmokers whose spouses do not smoke.5
- Women non-smokers have 62% more risk of stroke if their husbands' smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, than women nonsmokers living with nonsmoking spouses.6
- Among non-smoking women, exposure to environmental tobacco smoke is associated with a 15% increase in the risk of dying from heart disease compared with nonsmoking women not exposed to environmental tobacco smoke.7
- Homes and workplaces are the primary locations where nonsmokers are exposed to SHS, but exposure also occurs in public places such as restaurants and bars and in private vehicles.1
Environmental tobacco smoke
- Around 700 million children, or almost half of the world’s children, breathe air polluted by tobacco smoke, particularly at home.8
- Among students 13 to 15 years old in 132 countries 43.9% are exposed to SHS at home and 55.8% of the students are exposed to SHS in public places.9
- Almost 60% of US children aged 3–11 years—or almost 22 million children—are exposed to SHS. 1
- In Argentina, 68 % of children are exposed to passive smoking at home.8
- At least 200,000 workers die every year due to exposure to SHS at work.10
- Exposure to SHS kills as many women in China as does smoking: 48,400 women in China died from lung cancer and IHD attributed to passive smoking in 2002 compared with 47,300 lung cancer and heart disease deaths from "active" smoking.11
- The increasing presence of restrictive workplace policies seems to be a component of a substantial decline in self-reported passive smoke exposure.12 These policies also appear to be encouraging smokers to quit.13
1 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The health consequences of involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke: a report of the Surgeon General. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Ga. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Coordinating Center for Health Promotion, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health. 2006.
2 Venn A and Britton J. Exposure to secondhand smoke and biomarkers of cardiovascular disease risk in never-smoking adults. Circulation 2007;115 (8):990-5
3 Raupach T, Schafer K, Konstantinides S, Andreas S. Secondhand smoke as an acute threat for the cardiovascular system: a change in paradigm. Eur Heart J. 2006;27(4):386-92.
4 Panagiotakos DB, Pitsavos C, Stefanadis C.Chronic exposure to second hand smoke and 30-day prognosis of patients hospitalised with acute coronary syndromes: the Greek study of acute coronary syndromes. Heart. 2007;93(3):309-12.
5 Law MR, Wald NJ. Environmental tobacco smoke and ischemic heart disease. Prog Cardiovasc Dis. 2003;46(1):31-8.
6 Zhang X, Shu XO, Yang G, Li HL, Xiang YB, Gao YT, Li Q, Zheng W. Association of passive smoking by husbands with prevalence of stroke among Chinese women nonsmokers. Am J Epidemiol. 2005;161(3):213-8.
7 Kaur S, Cohen A, Dolor R, Coffman CJ, Bastian LA. The impact of environmental tobacco smoke on women's risk of dying from heart disease: a meta-analysis. J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2004;13(8):888-97.
8 J Mackay, G Mensah, Atlas of Heart Disease and Stroke. World Health Organization. Geneva, 2004.
9 The GTSS Collaborative Group. A cross country comparison of exposure to secondhand smoke among young. Tobacco Control. 2006;14(Suppl II):ii4-ii19.
10 Takala, J. Introductory Report: Decent Work – Safe Work. International Labour Organization, Geneva, 2005
11 Hu TW, Smith K, Hammond SK, Jiang Y. Data presented at 10th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate in Beijing, China, on Monday, Sept. 5 2005.
12 Widome R, Jacobs DR Jr, Schreiner PJ, Iribarren C. Passive smoke exposure trends and workplace policy in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study (1985-2001). Prev Med. 2007; EPub.
13 Hammond D, Fong GT, Zanna MP, Thrasher JF, Borland R. Tobacco denormalization and industry beliefs among smokers from four countries. Am J Prev Med. 2006;31(3):225-32.