Secondhand Smoke EPA Studies

The truth about secondhand smoke started to surface in the early 1990s. Needless to say, the tobacco companies fought hard to contradict all the evidence. So, the Environment Protection Agency studied secondhand smoke to see what the truth was.

Here’s a little information about those studies.

In 1993 the report “Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other Disorders” was released by the EPA. This report took at look at the respiratory effects of secondhand smoke. The EPA found that secondhand smoke causes cancer in adult non-smokers and also causes health problems in children.

The EPA went so far as to classify secondhand smoke as a “Group A carcinogen”. Group A carcinogen means there is sufficient evidence to show the substance causes cancer. Only 15 other pollutants have been classified as Group A—asbestos, radon, and benzene, to name a three.

The EPA determined that over 150,000 children per year get pneumonia or bronchitis from secondhand smoke.

The tobacco companies tried to refute the EPA’s finding, but were unsuccessful at swaying the EPA’s conclusion that secondhand smoke causes disease in non-smokers.

The EPA’s evidence was indisputable. Here are a few points in the EPA report that I think you’ll find interesting.

• Smoking tobacco has been shown to cause lung cancer in humans
• Secondhand smoke is chemically similar to cigarette smoke inhaled by smokers
• A large number of people who do not smoke are exposed to secondhand smoke
• Secondhand smoke has been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals
• Epidemiology studies done in several countries of non-smoking women who were exposed to secondhand smoke from their smoking husbands show a consistant causal relationship between secondhand smoke and lung cancer. Importantly, increased exposure resulted in increased chances of getting cancer



For more information, take a look at the EPA's website.

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