Measuring Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke in Studies of Acute Health Eftects

Abstract

The relations among three methods of measuring exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, questionnaires, urinary cotinine, and a passive monitor for ambient nicotine, were investigated in a study of 48 children in Minnesota in 1989. Subjects were all under 2 years of age and did not attend day care. Passive nicotine monitors were placed in the activity room and the child's bedroom for 1 week, urine samples were collected at the beginning and end of the week for cotinine analysis, and a detailed questionnaire concerning cigarette smoking was administered at the end of the week. These same measures were obtained weekly for 8 weeks for 22 of the children. Among households with smokers, concentrations of ambient nicotine and urinary cotinine were lowest when the father smoked, intermediate when the mother smoked, and highest when both parents smoked. Activity room concentrations were highly correlated with both urinary cotinine (r = 0.81) and the total number of cigarettes smoked in the house (r = 0.86). Regression equations indicated that knowing who smoked in the house was a more important predictor of ambient nicotine than knowing the amount smoked. Both urinary cotinine and ambient nicotine demonstrated variability over time, although ambient nicotine was less variable. In addition, 100% of possible ambient nicotine samples were collected in contrast to 80% of urine samples. The results of the study suggest that both urinary cotinine and ambient nicotine provide better information about the exposure of young children to environmental tobacco smoke than questionnaire data alone, and that ambient nicotine may be the more useful in this population based on its greater stability and ease of collection.

Inmate exposure to secondhand smoke in correctional facilities and the impact of smoking restrictions

“…Nicotine concentrations were calculated by dividing the number of micrograms of nicotine collected by the volume of air sampled (the effective sampling rate was 24 ml/min). The samplers have been found to be valid and reliable, and have been used in a variety of field settings (Coghlin et al, 1989;Mumford et al, 1989;Vaughan and Hammond, 1990;Hammond et al, 1993Hammond et al, , 1995Marbury et al, 1993;Emmons et al, 1994).…”

Assessment of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke

“…American Chemical Society, 1985). Respirable particulate concentration µg·m -3 Cumulative frequency % and RSP concentrations vary with the ETS source strength, and measurements in field studies have shown that their residential concentrations correlate highly with the reported amount of smoking [29][30][31][32]. For example, LEADERER and HAMMOND [30] reported a field study of 96 residences in Onondaga and Suffolk Counties in New York State, USA, where indoor air vapour-phase nicotine and RSP were monitored over a period of 1 week.…”

“…Questionnaire-derived measures of the level of ETS exposure have been only moderately correlated with body fluid cotinine concentrations among adults, but among children the correlations have been somewhat better [3,7,24,31,36,37,66]. On the other hand, although cotinine levels show considerable individual variability within exposure categories, several studies have demonstrated that average cotinine levels increase with the degree of reported ETS exposure [6].…”

“…The results of a linear regression analysis indicated that reported duration of ETS exposure and the number of cigarettes to which the subject reported being exposed were strongly related to the urinary cotinine level. Among children, salivary and urinary cotinine levels have been shown to rise with the number of smoking parents in the home [31,38], and in infants, urinary cotinine levels increased with the number of cigarettes smoked by the mother during the previous 24 h [67]. Among 202 newborns, the cord serum level of cotinine was significantly linearly related to the average daily number of cigarettes smoked by the mother during pregnancy [68].…”

Asthma and the home environment of low-income urban children: Preliminary findings from the seattle-king county healthy homes project

“…We also note that we do not assess conditions in higher income households and therefore Internal validity may be compromised because we report on exposures assessed by caregiver self-report and staff field observation without physical or biological measurements such as antigen load in dust, ambient tobacco levels, urinary/ salivary cotinine levels, or levels of volatile organic compounds. 67 We are collecting quantitative dust samples and will report in future publications on dust loading of bedroom carpets (~tg dust/m 2 carpet), allergen concentrations (mite, roach, cat, and dog) in dust (~tg allergen/g dust), and fungal spore concentrations and type.…”