Acute Cardiovascular Responses to Experimental Passive Smoking in Young, Healthy, Adult Men

Summary

Ten healthy adult men (20–40 years old) composed of five nonsmokers and five habitual smokers were subjected to measurement of changes in some selected parameters of cardiovascular function during passive smoking caused by experimental indoor air pollution due to the secondhand tobacco smoke. Every subject took part in two successive experiments in an exposure chamber: a control experiment was performed by sham smoking with non-lit cigarettes and an actual passive smoking experiment was done by smoking with standard cigarettes. All subjects participated in the experiments in groups of two nonsmokers and two smokers. Passive smoking conditions were prepared by successive smoking of three cigarettes by two smokers during a period of 1 h under poor ventilation (1 change/h). Concentrations of expired CO increased remarkably in all subjects along with the progress of actual passive smoking. The changes for nonsmokers reached values twice as high as the initial values, and those for smokers were about three times as high. Heart rates, systolic blood pressures, and Katz indexes increased appreciably for nonsmokers and markedly for smokers during actual passive smoking period. Finger skin temperatures tended to decrease in nonsmokers and decreased definitely in smokers concurrently with those changes. Although there existed an obvious difference between the extents of the changes observed, the nature of the nonsmokers’ acute cardiovascular responses to passive smoking appeared to be the same as those of habitual smokers’ responses to actual smoking.