Health authorities in many countries have branded environmental
tobacco smoke a serious hazard, and their stance has become the
basis for laws which have turned smokers into pariahs, turfing them
out of offices, restaurants, bars and clubs and into the street.
The US Surgeon General, for one, concludes that there is a
30-percent increase in the risk of developing coronary heart disease
among non-smokers who are chronically exposed to other people's
smoke.
But the new study, published in the British Medical Journal
(BMJ), says it found almost negligible evidence to support such
allegations among a large group of Californians who were monitored
for health for nearly 40 years.
The group comprised 35,561 people who did not smoke but whose
spouse was a smoker.
They were among 118,094 adults who took part in a cancer
prevention study carried out from 1959 to 1998 by the American
Cancer Society (news
- web
sites).
Although many smokers, as expected, fell sick with heart disease,
lung cancer and respiratory blockage, no such association was found
for the passively-smoking spouses, the authors said.
"The results do not support a causal relation between
environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco-related mortality, although
they do not rule out a small effect.
"The association between (passive smoking) and coronary heart
disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally
believed," they wrote.
The study, written by James Enstrom of the University of
California at Los Angeles and Geoffrey Kabat, an associate professor
at the State University of New York, appears in next Saturday's
issue of the weekly BMJ.
The British Medical Association (BMA) -- which publishes the BMJ
-- immediately blasted the study as "fundamentally flawed" and based
on data that, it said, had been discarded by the American Cancer
Society itself.
"Most of the data has been around for decades... but was judged
by many expert groups to be inadequate to accurately measure passive
smoking," it said.
Problems included absent or vague information as to how much
smoke the passive smokers were exposed to, as well as confusing and
sometimes conflicting classifications, the BMA said.
"There is overwhelming evidence, built up over decades, that
passive smoking causes lung cancer and heart disease, as well as
triggering asthma attacks," the BMA's head of science and ethics,
Vivienne Nathanson, said.
"In children, passive smoking increases the risk of pneumonia,
bronchitis, and reduces lung growth, as well as both causing and
worsening asthma."
The controversy coincides with preparations to ratify the first
international treaty to protect public health from smoking, the
World Health Organisation's Framework Convention for Tobacco
Control.
The accord states that "each party shall, in accordance with its
constitution or constitutional principles, undertake a comprehensive
ban of all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship."
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Countries unable under their constitutions to impose such a ban
would seek to restrict tobacco advertising.
The treaty will be presented May 19-28 at the annual conference
of the 192 WHO member states in Geneva. It will come into effect
once it is ratified by 40 countries.
