Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke: association with personal characteristics and self reported health conditions

Study objective-To examine the association between exposure to environmenta l tobacco smoke (ETS) and demographic, lifestyle, occupational characterist ics and self reported health conditions. Design-Cross sectional study, using data from multiphasic health checkups b etween 1979 and 1985. Setting-Large health plan in Northern California, USA. Participants-16 524 men aged 15-89 years and 26 197 women aged 15-105 years who never smoked. Results-Sixty eight per cent of men and 64 per cent of women reported any c urrent ETS exposure (at home, in small spaces other than home or in large i ndoor areas). The exposure time from all three sources of ETS exposure corr elated negatively with age. Men and women reporting high level ETS exposure were more likely to be black and never married or separated/divorced, to h ave no college or partial college education, to consume three alcoholic dri nk/day or more and to report exposure to several occupational hazards. Cons istent independent relations across sexes were found between any current ex posure to ETS and a positive history of hay fever/asthma (odds ratio (OR=1. 22 in men, 1.14 in women), hearing loss (OR=1.30 in men, 1.27 in women), se vere headache (OR=1.22 in men, 1.17 in women) , and cold/flu symptoms (OR=1 .52 in men, 1.57 in women). Any current ETS exposure was also associated wi th chronic cough (OR=1.22) in men and with heart disease (OR=1.10) in women . Self reported stroke was inversely associated with any current ETS exposu re in men (OR=0.27). No associations were noted for cancer or tumour and fo r migraine. Conclusion-ETS exposure correlated with several personal characteristics po tentially associated with adverse health outcomes. Although the study desig n precluded causal inference, ETS exposure was associated with several self reported acute and chronic medical conditions.