Tobacco Documents Online

PASSIVE SMOKING AND MORTALITY AMONG A SAMPLE OF THE UNITED STATES POPULATION James E. Enstrom, Ph.D., M.P.H. School of Public Health and Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center University of California Los Angeles, CA 90024 October 24, 1995 ABSTRACT The relation between spousal cigarette smoking and mortality has been examined in the First National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES I) Epidemiologic Follow-up Study cohort. A representative sample of 11,348 noninstitutionalized U.S. adults aged 25-74 years has been examined in detail during 1971-74 and 1982-84, including an assessment of spousal cigarette smoking. This cohort has been followed up for mortality through 1987. The relation of mortality for selected causes of death to spousal cigarette smoking in 1,047 men and 3,304 women who never smoked cigarettes has been analyzed using proportional hazards models. The relation is not significant for any cause after adjustment for age and sex, or after additional adjustment for ten potentially confounding variables (including diet, education, race, and disease history). Measurement errors in personal and spousal smoking histories are on the order of 10% based on comparing responses in 1971-74 and 1982-84. These results do not support the notion that passive smoking has a measurable impact on human mortality, but they cannot rule out small effects on individual causes of death. Keywords: passive smoking, smoking,mortality, NHEFS cohort, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, epidemiology