Parents who smoke are still exposing their children to passive smoking in the home

To determine whether British children's exposure to passive smoking had changed since the late 1980s Jarvis et al examined the results of cross sectional surveys of salivary cotinine concentrations in representative samples of schoolchildren from 1988 and 1998 (p 343). Among all non-smoking children cotinine concentrations almost halved, mainly because of reductions in exposure in children from non-smoking homes and a fall in the number of parents smoking. Children living with parents who smoked showed little reduction in exposure.

Related Article

Children's exposure to passive smoking in England since the 1980s: cotinine evidence from population surveys

Martin J Jarvis, Eileen Goddard, Vanessa Higgins, Colin Feyerabend, Andrew Bryant, and Derek G Cook
BMJ 2000 321: 343-345. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]