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• ‘What are these kids breathing?’ 

So began what Kovesi calls the most important research of his career. For the past 10 years, he has sought to explain why the children of Baffin Island have the world’s highest rates of hospitalization for pneumonia, bronchiolitis and other lower respiratory tract infections. . . .

It was well known that Nunavut had high smoking rates, but Kovesi was convinced the problem had to go beyond that since parts of Asia and Africa had similar smoking rates, but not the same kind of pediatric lung disease.

So he led a research team that set about testing air quality inside Nuvavut’s homes. In one study that tested air quality inside 49 homes in four Baffin Island communities, he recorded smokers in 94 per cent of residences.

“Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke was nearly universal,” the 2007 study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, concluded.

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