The National Cancer Institute recently released a monograph called Health Effects of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke: The Report of the California Environmental Protection Agency. The report links secondhand smoke, also called environmental tobacco smoke, not only with lung cancer but with heart disease, sudden infant death syndrome, nasal sinus cancer, and a host of other diseases in both adults and children.
The new report, compiled by the California Environmental Protection Agency, includes 18 epidemiological studies linking environmental tobacco smoke to coronary heart disease. Donald Shopland, coordinator of NCI's Smoking and Tobacco Control Program noted that "environmental tobacco smoke exposures are related to much more than heart disease. When the thousands of environmental tobacco smoke-related lung cancers and other diseases are considered, environmental tobacco smoke clearly is a major cause of death in the United States."
Environmental tobacco smoke is a complex mixture formed during burning from lit cigarettes, pipes, and cigars. Thousands of chemicals are found in the environmental tobacco smoke mixture including hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, and dozens of compounds that are known carcinogens, tumor promoters, or tumor initiators.
The NCI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in coordination with the California EPA, will disseminate the monograph widely. This monograph is the 10th in a continuing series of NCI monographs dealing with smoking and health issues, and is available, along with earlier monographs, on NCI's Web site at http://rex.nci.nih.gov/NCI_MONOGRAPHS/INDEX.HTM.
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