The team of Chi C. Leung, Wanchai Chest Clinic in Wanchai, compared the risk of TB in older women who lived with (at least) a smoker with the risk of women who lived in smoke-free homes.

The study included 15 486 non-smokers, between 65 and 74. All lived with their husbands and had attended one of 18 health centers for elderly in Hong Kong between 2000 and 2003. One in four lived with a smoker.
During follow-up, which lasted until late 2008 (or until death or diagnosis of TB), 117 women developed active TB and 69 of these cases were laboratory confirmed.

The team found that women who were exposed to secondhand smoke were 1.5 times more likely to develop active TB than women not living with a smoker, while the risk of culture-confirmed disease was 1, 7 times higher.
Exposure to secondary smoking caused 14% of active TB cases and 18% of culture confirmed cases.
In addition, women who lived with a smoker were much more likely to have some type of obstructive lung disease such as emphysema, or diabetes mellitus at baseline.

The results were published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Commenting on the study, Dr. Neal L. Benowitz of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote that secondhand smoke causes several harmful effects, including increased risk of developing lung cancer and heart disease in adults, and the onset of bronchial asthma and lower respiratory disease in children.

In addition, smoking promotes the development of respiratory infections such as TB, by altering lung capacity to eliminate the infection.
In China, 60% of men smoke, but only 4% of women, so the secondhand smoke affects them disproportionately.

“Exposure to secondhand smoke is another pressing health problem that affects women in less developed countries. Therefore, the smoking ban should be part of the agenda of protecting women’s health,” said the specialist .

A new study, published in ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ ( ‘PNAS’), warning of what he calls “third-hand smoke,” ie, “residual [...] that nicotine has been absorbed by certain areas. It seems that it reacts with nitrous acid present in the environment and, as a result of this, form a kind of nitrosamines which are carcinogens.

In reaching this conclusion, experts from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at San Francisco (USA), took a series of samples in the truck drivers who had years of smoking over multiple paths and compared it with those obtained in the laboratory.

The cellulose used in various tests showed “presence of snuff-specific carcinogenic nitrosamines (TSNA, by its initials in English) 10 times,” the investigation, which recommended more attention to possible chemical reactions that can occur in the spaces. In fact, the environment may become more toxic over time and the largest accumulation of nicotine in rugs or carpet, for example.

Also this week, the prestigious journal Archives of Internal Medicine has published another work on the risks of environmental smoke in this case, is based on the risk faced by women exposed at home to bad fumes from their husbands .

After studying a cohort of almost 15,500 citizens of Hong Kong, non-smokers and aged between 65 and 74 years, scientists, led by Chi C. Leung and from different centers of that region in China, underscore the presence of a tight link between passive smoking and the diagnosis of tuberculosis. Some years ago, in 1996, a Spanish study came to a conclusion quite similar.

These data are particularly relevant in countries like China, where consumption of snuff is heavily unbalanced: 60% of men smoke, compared to 4% of women. Cigarettes, thus affecting the health of them silently. “Passive smoking accounted for 13.7% of active TB cases in this sample,” the work. This exposure can cause respiratory or other diseases including diabetes and coronary disorders, add a comment reported by the magazine cited the American Medical Association.

Two separate papers, as well as the editorial said, show two clear scientific evidence for banning the consumption of snuff in enclosed public places and on transport, and even at home. These are measures that protect the health of smokers, assets and liabilities, and that promote cessation of use of the former.
Letting her help

Besides cleaning the air, fighting this addiction is another major public health objectives of governments around the world. Advertising campaigns, education and proposals that support the financing of nicotine replacement therapies or specific drugs such as bupropion or varenicline. Precisely on this last topic concerns a new work, published in ‘PLoS Medicine’ and signed by an anti snuff guru, Simon Chapman.

The professor of Public Health, University of Sydney (Australia), among other charges has sustained the director of the journal Tobacco Control ‘, highlights that the majority of smokers who manages to overcome his habit will no more help than their willingness and effort.

In this sense, the paper denounces the strategy of a pharmaceutical industry bent on selling its product and, as a side effect is “medicalized” smoking. “The people lose confidence in their ability to change practices that are not healthy,” he adds.

“They should repeat smokers who spend withdrawal and gradually reduce consumption are the most common among those who manage to quit. Most were surprised to find that quitting is easy or somewhat difficult,” supports the controversial article.