Prevalence of exposure to passive smoking and awareness about its ill effects among medical college undergraduate students in Mangalore

Abstract

Introduction: Passive smoking, it is the combination of side stream smoke given off by a burning tobacco product and mainstream smoke exhaled by a smoker. Exposure to passive smoking can take place in the home, the workplace or other environment that are accessible to the public places. Aim: To estimate the prevalence of exposure to passive smoking and awareness about its ill effects among Medical colliege undergraduate students in Mangalore. Materials and Method : This was a cross sectional study was conducted among 400 randomly selected undergraduate students in one of the medical college in Mangalore. Data was obtained by using a pre tested, structured questionnaire. Results: Among the total 400 students, 216 were males and 184 were females. Of the 400 students 10.25% were smokers (18.9% males, 0% females) 12.75% past smookers (20.3% males, 3.8% females) , 77.0% were non smokers. Awareness of passive smoking among all participants was 86.5%. Most of the people were exposed to passive smoking (96.25%) in public places in last thirty days. 61.5% students were exposed to passive smoking in their hostel daily (males=88.8%, females= 29.3%). 42.3% replied passive smoking causes serious health hazard, 2.8% told that it is not at all a health hazard. Conclusion: Self-reported tobacco use status, parents tobacco use, close friends smoking, and participants residence were the signaficant determinants of exposure to pasive smoking at home and outside the home. Knowledge regarding ill effects of passive smoking varied among students.