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Secondhand smoke in the home appears to induce markers for heart disease as early as the toddler years, researchers reported at the American Heart Association's 48th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention.
It has long been known that many forms of cardiovascular disease in adults are initiated and progress silently during childhood. Now researchers have found a young child's response to smoke may not just affect the respiratory system, but the cardiovascular system as well.
"This is the first study that looks at the response of a young child's cardiovascular system to secondhand smoke," said Judith Groner, M.D., lead author of the study, pediatrician and ambulatory care physician at Nationwide Children's Hospital and Research Institute in Columbus, Ohio.
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Little is known about long-term adverse health consequences experienced by flight attendants exposed to secondhand smoke (SHS) during the time smoking was allowed on airplanes. We undertook this study to evaluate the association between accumulated flight time in smoky airplane cabins and respiratory tract diseases in a cohort of never smoking flight attendants. . . .
Conclusion
We observed a significant association between hours of smoky cabin exposure and self-reported reported sinusitis, middle ear infections, and asthma. Our findings suggest a dose-response between duration of SHS exposure and diseases of the respiratory tract. Our findings add additional evidence to the growing body of knowledge supporting the need for widespread implementation of clean indoor air policies to decrease the risk of adverse health consequences experienced by never smokers exposed to SHS.
This article is the first peer-reviewed publication of systematic measurements of OTS concentrations. The main conclusion from these data, that OTS levels can be substantial under certain conditions, is vital to the development of outdoor tobacco control policy. Because adequate information on OTS levels and human exposures has previously been lacking, the estimation of health risks associated with OTS has been hindered, and public discourse concerning OTS has been impaired. The present study also has shown that continuous, portable airborne particle monitors are suitable in OTS investigations across a range of locations and environmental conditions.
Now, Stanford University researchers have conducted the first in-depth study on how smoking affects air quality at sidewalk cafés, park benches and other outdoor locations. Writing in the May issue of the Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association (JAWMA), the Stanford team concluded that a non-smoker sitting a few feet downwind from a smoldering cigarette is likely to be exposed to substantial levels of contaminated air for brief periods of time.
"Some folks have expressed the opinion that exposure to outdoor tobacco smoke is insignificant, because it dissipates quickly into the air," said Neil Klepeis, assistant professor (consulting) of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and lead author of the study. "But our findings show that a person sitting or standing next to a smoker outdoors can breathe in wisps of smoke that are many times more concentrated than normal background air pollution levels." . . .
Unlike indoor tobacco smoke, which can persist for hours, the researchers found that outdoor smoke disappears rapidly when a cigarette is extinguished. "Our data also show that if you move about six feet away from an outdoor smoker, your exposure levels are much lower," Klepeis added. . . .
In the study, the researchers used portable electronic monitors to make precise measurements of toxic airborne particles emitted from cigarettes at 10 sites near the Stanford campus.
A Florida State University researcher who is developing methods for regenerating blood vessels damaged by secondhand tobacco smoke has received a fellowship award that could provide as much as $450,000 over five years for her to pursue new scientific approaches.
Feng Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher in the Florida A&M University-Florida State University College of Engineering, was selected by the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute (FAMRI) to receive a 2006-2007 FAMRI Young Clinical Scientist Award.
Patty Young of Dallas was a flight attendant for 36 years with American Airlines. In the 1980s, her testimony before Congress helped persuade lawmakers to ban smoking on flights, and she helped spearhead a major class-action lawsuit on the part of flight attendants. She spoke last month with assistant editorial page editor Michael Landauer:
You were a leader in the fight to get smoking banned on flights, and you have made the anti-smoking crusade your life's work. Looking back, was there one moment when you decided you were going to commit yourself to this fight?
The moment that my fight started was at the very start of my career in the summer of 1966 when nonsmoking flight attendants - we were called stewardesses then - told me that they were told by their doctors that they had the lungs of smokers. I often became extremely sick with severe headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, blocked ears and constant coughing - often with flulike symptoms. I grew up in a home where my mother and father smoked - sadly, they have both died from lung cancer - and I was never sick like I was as a new flight attendant. . . .
If someone wanted to get involved, where should they target their energy?
People should refuse to go to places that allow smoking and also get involved in making their cities smoke-free by calling city hall and insisting on change. They should realize that when they go to places that allow smoking, they are putting themselves and their loved ones in grave danger for sickness and disease.
Scientists say they have found nicotine receptors on kidney cells that may link nicotine to accelerated kidney damage in cigarette smokers.
Their research -- presented at the American Heart Association's 60th Annual Fall Conference of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research -- also identifies nicotine as the component of cigarette smoke that damages the kidneys.
"There are many substances in cigarette smoke and nicotine is one of the more investigated ones," said Edgar A. Jaimes, M.D., associate professor of medicine at the University of Miami School of Medicine in Florida. "Initially, it was believed that the nicotine component of cigarette smoke was only responsible for the addictive effects of smoking. However, now we are finding out that nicotine can have significant biological effects in other tissues."
Cigarette smoke could be a cause of breast cancer after all, University of Florida researchers recently reported in a cellular cancer journal called Oncogene.
Breast cancer is one of the few cancers in which a link to smoking has never been clearly established, and researchers believe their findings could be important in helping to understand why more than 220,000 cases of the disease are diagnosed each year in the United States.
The Florida study differs in one key aspect from previous studies that have not found a clear link between smoking and breast cancer: The researchers used condensate from actual tobacco smoke, in which normal breast cells were exposed to the full range of the 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke and not just a few of its known toxins, and injected it into laboratory mice. . . .
Narayan's study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute, based in Miami.
FAMRI's Fourth Scientific Symposium, held at the Wyndham Miami Beach Resort in Florida, May 11-13, was dedicated to the protection of children from the effects of second hand tobacco smoke exposure. The 2005 sessions created a forum for the grantees to collaborate with other scientists in the field on the findings emerging from the prior years of funding and to learn about the historical perspective on the health effects of second hand tobacco smoke from the champions of a smoke free environment-the Trustees (click here). In addition, attendees had opportunity to learn about the progress of FAMRI's Centers of Excellence and discuss issues relating to children.
Golisano Children's Hospital at Strong will lead a national effort to help eradicate children's exposure to secondhand smoke.
The children's hospital will helm a national center that will orchestrate new research about parental smoking habits and children's daily exposure to secondhand smoke. The center also will develop educational programs that will help pediatricians nationwide encourage parents and caregivers to quit smoking.
Dr. Jonathan D. Klein, a pediatrician at Golisano Children's Hospital and an associate professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center, will organize the development of research and programs among UR, the American Academy of Pediatrics and six other sites, including Harvard Medical School and Dartmouth and New York universities.
The center was given $8.3 million over five years from the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute
The Florida Supreme Court has cleared the way for more than 3,000 flight attendants to seek compensatory damages against tobacco companies for claims that they suffered respiratory illnesses from secondhand cigarette smoke aboard U.S. airline flights.
The ruling leaves in place a crucial decision by the state's 3rd District Court of Appeal that each litigant does not have to reprove strict liability by the tobacco companies for introducing a dangerous product onto the market. All the flight attendants must show, the panel said, was that they were exposed to secondhand smoke and that the exposure led to their health problems.
On Nov. 28, the Florida Supreme Court refused to hear the companies' appeal of a judgment in favor of Lynn French, a former flight attendant who said she suffered health problems while working aboard planes during the days when travelers could still smoke.
"[The Supreme Court's decision] now gives us the green light to move these cases forward after these years of delay, and it establishes what the issues are that remain to be litigated," said Miami solo practitioner Joel Perwin, who authored an answer brief opposing consideration by the state's high court.
The Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University will study the health effects of secondhand smoke using a grant from the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute.
FAMRI's By-Laws provide that Flight Attendants involved in the class-action lawsuit are to be the majority of the Board of Trustees. The following are the Trustees' stories as advocates combating second hand tobacco smoke in airline cabins:
Bland Lane . . . Lani Blissard . . . Leisa Sudderth . . . Patty Young
Try your cases and if you lose, then come back to us and appeal. That's basically what the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Miami on Wednesday told several big cigarette makers that were seeking to overturn a lower court ruling preventing them from reopening key issues relating to the hazards of secondhand cigarette smoke.
Last month, lawyers for cigarette makers argued before the 3rd DCA that Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Robert Kaye had misinterpreted a settlement agreement signed by the companies and a class of flight attendants who had sued the companies for damage to their health from secondhand smoke aboard airplanes. The cigarette makers contended that Kaye's ruling "contradicted the plain language of the agreement."
They asked the three-judge panel to rule that the flight attendants bear the burden of proving strict liability, breach of implied warranty and negligence when they finally begin to try their cases in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.
Lawyers for the flight attendants told the appellate court it did not have jurisdiction over such matters because the claims were still pending in circuit court. They also contended that if the defendants want to challenge Kaye's interpretation of the settlement agreement, they should do it after the verdicts in the secondhand smoke cases -- but not before the cases are tried.
The appellate court agreed with the flight attendants' attorneys, dismissing the appeal without prejudice and inviting lawyers for Big Tobacco to come back "at the conclusion of the case."