Determinants of children's exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS): A study in Southern Germany

Abstract

Maternal smoking has been repeatedly found to be the most important determinant of children's exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Here, we further investigated predictors for the urinary cotinine/creatinine ratio (CCR, ng/mg) in 1220 preschool children for the year 1996. Children from smoking homes (35.1%) had significantly higher CCR than children from nonsmoking homes (mean: 55.5 vs. 14.9 ng/mg). The level of education of the parents was a strong predictor for CCRs even after adjusting for number of cigarettes smoked, maternal smoking and dwelling space. Additionally, dwelling space was inversely related to children's urinary cotinine level. The CCR-levels in children investigated in 1996 and 1998 were significantly correlated (Pearson's r ¼ 0.67). The parents of 806 children agreed for a visit to their homes. In 79 of the 536 (14.7%) of the self-reported, nonsmoking households, smoking was admitted during the visit. The mean urinary CCR of these children was 25.2 ng/mg. We conclude that in addition to parental smoking behaviour, other variables such as dwelling space and social and educational status predict the children's exposure to ETS. Our data also revealed that a considerable percentage of parents denied the ETS exposure of their children at home.

Urinary cotinine concentrations in preschool children showed positive associations with smoking fathers

“…There was a strong negative association between the SES scores and the urinary cotinine concentrations of children. However, Scherer et al suggested that the urinary cotinine concentrations of children decreased as the sizes of the apartments they lived in increased (21). That finding conflicts with our data.…”

“…This finding may be because being a daily smoker and consuming more cigarettes per day suggest having a high dependency on nicotine and fewer restrictions in smoking behaviour in the home. However, Scherer et al suggested that the urinary cotinine concentrations of children decreased as the sizes of the apartments they lived in increased (21). These results were consistent with the majority of other reports (15)(16)(17).…”

Leisure time activity and new onset of wheezing during adolescence

“…Interestingly, lower social status was associated with higher frequency of TV watching. Although data focusing on the association between prevalence of smoking and SES are controversial, many studies show a strong inverse association between parental or own SES and smoking in children and adolescents [20,21], especially in Germany [22][23][24]. For further epidemiological studies on asthma and leisure time activity, the present results show that computer work cannot be used synonymously with TV watching in analysing the effects of leisure time activities on asthma.…”

Prevalence of secondhand smoke exposure at home and associated factors among middle school students in Northern Thailand

“…It is possible that the smaller number of rooms in the house had fewer panels to mitigate the dispersion of secondhand smoke. Moreover, it was the limitation of space that students had less chance to avoid secondhand smoke exposure in the house 29 . Meanwhile, the three sociodemographic factors affected the students' exposure to secondhand smoke, and the coexistence with at least one smoker in the house increased the possibility of exposure to secondhand smoke 7.43 times that of students who were living in a house without a smoker, in line with previous research 30 .…”