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AP v513a ra 3exec Passive Smoking, Bjt,0592 08-01 3:17p Study: others' Smoke will Kill 47,000 Nonsmokers From Heart Disease in 1994 By PAUL RAEBURN AP Science Editor NEW YORK (AP) - Secondhand cigarette smoke will cause an estimated 47,000 deaths and about 150,000 non-fatal heart attacks in U.S. nonsmokers this year, a study says. That•s as much as 6o percent higher than previous estimates. The figures are projected from an analysis of 1985 data that showed that heart disease caused by other people's smoke killed 62,000 people that year and caused as many as 200,000 heart attacks. The reduction since than is due to a decline in smoking and an increase in restrictions on smoking in public places, the study said. The findings, to be published this week in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, appear amid a public relations campaign by the tobacco industry. In a series of full-paqe newspaper ads, Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds have raised questions about links between secondhand smoke and lunq cancer. The new study focuses on heart disease, which it said is a more serious problem. "Heart disease appears to be by far the major mortality risk from passive smoking," the study concluded. "Practicinq physicians would do well to warn their at-risk heart patients to avoid smoky rooms." The study was conducted by A. Judson Wells, a consultant to the U.S. Occupational safety and Health Administration and a volunteer with the American Lung Association. Earlier calculations, including one by Wells himself, had estimated that secondhand smoke was responsible for 32,000 to 37,000 heart disease deaths a year in nonsmokers. Brennan Dawson of the Tobacco znstitute in Washington noted that a 1986 U.S. Surgeon General's report on smoking failed to find a link between secondhand smoke and heart disease. "Nothing that's been published since then would cause a change in that," Dawson said. Researchers studying the problem, however, argue that a wealth of data on such a link has been produced since the surgeon qQneral's report. Wells said that in his naw study, he used 1985 figures to allow comparison with an Environmental Protection Agency study that used the same data to show that secondhand smoke causes about 3,000 lung cancer deaths a year in nonsmokers. Wells* figures were based on a mathematical analysis of previous studies showing the risks of secondhand smoke. He said his study employed a new method devised by the EpA for its lung cancer report. He is the first to apply the method to heart disease. After calculating the number of heart-disease deaths blamed on secondhand smoke, he arrived at the number of heart attacks by simple multiplication. "There are three times as many heart attacks as there are heart deaths," he said. Nc figmr*~s are available yot to confirm V4,11z' 1994 projewtions. "This is a much more sophisticated analysis than anybody's ever done before," said Stanton Glantz of the University of California at San Francisco, who had done one of the earlier estimates. "This very large number of non-fatal events means you could be having a very important offect on medical care costs," he said.

"It's a lot more expansive if somebody lives through a heart attack than if they dio.N The study noted that even brief exposure to other people's smoke can trigger heart diseas4 in nonsmokers. Breathing cigarette smoke for as little as 20 minutes to eight hours can produce immediate changes in a nonsmokar's cardiovascular system, the study said.