Perceptions about the Health Effects of Passive Smoking among Bangladeshi Young Adults

Abstract

Passive smoking is now firmly established as a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Assessment of young adults’ perceptions, understanding and knowledge of the health effects of passive smoking may promote educational endeavours to increase awareness of the passive smoking-linked health effects and to facilitate interventions. The study, therefore, assessed the perceptions of young adults in Bangladesh about the health effects of passive smoking. This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among 656 young adults in two districts under Dhaka division of Bangladesh. The study used a multistage cluster random sampling approach. Binary logistic regression was used for identifying the predictors of perceptions that passive smoking is harmful. The vast majority of the respondents believed that passive smoking causes illnesses but the knowledge of specific health effects was limited. Most (87.2%) respondents perceived that passive smoking causes ‘some’ or ‘a lot’ of harm to health of both adults and children. However, disparities in perceptions were prevalent across their educational levels. The results of logistic regression analysis showed that, after adjusting other factors, respondents who had nine or more years of education were 6.7 times likelihood of perceiving that passive smoking causes “some” or “lot of harm” compared to those who had no education. The findings suggested that more efforts, including some appropriate measures to address knowledge gaps, are needed to increase better perception about the harmful effects of passive smoking among young adults.

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“…The current study find out most of them (85.7%) are live in nuclear family and only 14.3% were lives in extended family. Similar result was found in a study conducted by Sultana et al, (2016) [6], they found that most of the participants lives in nuclear Another study also found similar report. Majority of the participants (94.6%) were lived in nuclear family and 5.4% single parent family [19] in Malaysia.…”

“…Students tend to be more susceptible to secondhand smoking related harm because of secondhand smoking exposure in the environment [5]. A large number of adult people and children are affected by secondhand smoking from their own home or in other public place [6]. School children are exposed to Secondhand smoking through living with smoker indoor at homes, open public places as like where selling pan, tobacco and a ban on smoking, work places, public transport, in child care centers, kindergartens or pre-schools, open boundary space of schools, in all areas of train stations, covered bus shelters, raised platform tram stops and all tram stop shelters [7].Tobacco smoke release 4,000 chemicals, among them 250 chemicals are identified in secondhand smoke, and 50 of them chemicals are known carcinogens [8].…”

“…School children are exposed to Secondhand smoking through living with smoker indoor at homes, open public places as like where selling pan, tobacco and a ban on smoking, work places, public transport, in child care centers, kindergartens or pre-schools, open boundary space of schools, in all areas of train stations, covered bus shelters, raised platform tram stops and all tram stop shelters [7].Tobacco smoke release 4,000 chemicals, among them 250 chemicals are identified in secondhand smoke, and 50 of them chemicals are known carcinogens [8]. Smoking increased the risk of smoking-related disorders in adult population such as lung cancer, stroke, progression to tuberculosis disease, and an asthmatic condition [6]. On the other hand secondhand smoking is a major causes of heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer in non-smoking adults, affects fetal development, infant death syndrome, and childhood asthma various cancers and cerebrovascular diseases.…”

“…In Bangladesh overall tobacco consumption significantly high about 43.3% and exposure to secondhand smoke at work place 63% [12]. World Health Organization(2009) showed that approximately 44.0% of the total population of Bangladesh was exposed to primary sources of secondhand smoking at their home, public venues, in other places [6,11].The prevalence of secondhand smoking of children is a potential public health problem worldwide. The prevalence of secondhand smoking among 40% children more than 18 years in 2011, in 2013 and 2017 identified it 39% for adults and 31.1% for 13 to 15 aged children, in 2017 reported that the secondhand smoking rate increased to 95% in the urban areas of Dhaka, in Bangladesh [13].…”

Exposure to secondhand smoke is associated with poor sleep quality among non-smoking university students in Bangladesh: a cross-sectional survey

“…In addition, the prevalence of smoking among university students in Bangladesh is 60.2%, thus, increasing the likelihood of exposure to SHS 27 . Currently, there is a lack of understanding and awareness on the adverse effect of SHS 28 . Although SHS exposure in Bangladesh has been strongly linked with gender, age, literacy, household incomes, and number of smokers in the family 29 , the adverse consequences of secondhand smoking on university students’ sleep quality have remained an under-investigated area in the country’s public health landscape.…”