Published 19 October 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4290
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4290

News

Bans on public smoking reduce deaths among people exposed to secondhand smoke, study shows

Bob Roehr

1 Washington, DC

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Local laws that ban smoking in restaurants, offices, and other public places reduce the risk of heart attacks and heart disease in people exposed to secondhand smoke. The findings came in a report from the US Institute of Medicine that was released on 15 October.

"It’s clear that smoking bans work, [and they] reduce the risks of heart attack in non-smokers as well as smokers," said Lynn Goldman, professor of environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who led the study group that wrote the report.

The evidence from 11 studies in the United States, Canada, and Scotland was sufficient to establish causation. But it was not sufficient to fully characterise the "dose" curve of exposure to secondhand smoke that is required for that harmful effect and recovery when the smoke is removed.

"We are not saying that only exposure to smoke is important. We must . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ