Passive Exposure to Nicotine in Daily Environment

Summary

Passive smoking is a typical example of indoor air pollution occurring in daily living spaces such as offices and homes and is a topic of extensive dispute throughout the world from the viewpoint of health effects on those within these spaces, as shown in the Surgeon General’s Report [1] and Weiss et al. [2]. However, there are relatively few quantitative analyses of how ambient spaces are polluted by secondhand smoking and how the residents within these spaces are exposed to secondhand smoke. As a step to clarify the actual situation of passive smoking, we started to measure environmental nicotine concentration in daily life [3].

This study is in two parts. The first consists of measurements of nicotine concentration in the air of various spaces such as offices, restaurants, cars and houses. The second is an analysis of nicotine exposure of individuals who are walking and moving at random in these spaces.