ABSTRACT
Today, alternative evaluation of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure by biological measures is commonly used. These methods involve the measurement of concentrations of smoke components in body uids of an exposed individual, called biomarkers (Benowitz, 1996; Tutka et al., 2002), which dened the risk of exposure, the effects of exposure, or individual susceptibility to exposure (Scherer, 2006). Human biomonitoring is a means of acquiring data on the exposure of people to environmental toxicants and the effects of such exposure by means of the analysis of cells, tissues, and biological uids (Polkowska et al., 2004). Biomarkers reveal the presence of the pollutants by the occurrence of typical symptoms or measurable responses. They are even suitable when assessing long-term exposure to cigarette smoke over days or months (Jaakkola and Jaakkola, 1997). They can be classied as a measure of (a) chemical exposure, that is, a direct or indirect measure of a tobacco-derived constituent or metabolite, which ideally can provide a quantitative estimate of tobacco exposure; (b) toxicity, including biologically effective dose, that is, “the amount that a tobacco constituent or metabolite binds to or alters a macromolecule either in target or surrogate tissue”; (c) injury or potential harm, that is, “a measurement of an effect due to exposure; these include early biological effects, alterations in morphology, structure or function, and clinical symptoms consistent with harm”; and (d) direct measures of health outcome (Hatsukami et al., 2006).
