ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the relationship between passive exposure to cigarette smoke and cardiopulmonary disease will be limited to non-malignant conditions and restricted to evidence from epidemiological and clinical studies. It describes a few studies to illustrate the kind and quality of evidence that is available, and provides an overview and evaluation of the results of published studies. Most epidemiological studies use crude measures of passive exposure to cigarette smoke and rely on available information about smoking habits of associates of nonsmokers. Rates of illness or of medical consultation for illness or hospitalization increased with the number of parental smokers and with the number of cigarettes they smoked per day. Age-adjusted prevalence rates of chronic respiratory symptoms and illnesses for males and females grouped with reference to the cigarette smoking habits of their parents. Few experimental studies have been designed to detect and quantify acute effects of passive exposure to cigarette smoke or some of its constituents under carefully controlled conditions.
