SHORT REPORT

Environmental tobacco smoke and prevalent coronary heart disease among never smokers in the Scottish MONICA surveys

R Chen, R Tavendale, H Tunstall-Pedoe

Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit, Institute of Cardiovascular Research, University of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, Dundee DD1 9SY, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr R Chen
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, UCL, 1–19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 6BT, UK; ruoling.chen@westminster-pct.nhs.uk

Accepted 24 March 2004

Keywords: coronary heart disease; environmental tobacco smoke; working environment

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

Although many studies have shown that environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) or passive smoking increases the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD),^1–6 there is still scepticism. This may be due to the small magnitude of the effect (about 25–35% increase^5,6), inadequate adjustment for confounding variables, and misclassification of passive smoking. To estimate exposure, the majority of previous studies used only self report, without any biochemical markers, which could result in misclassification errors arising both from respondent and investigator biases. We analysed data from the Scottish MONICA surveys to see whether prevalent coronary heart disease is independently associated with passive smoking measured by self report, serum cotinine, and their combination.

Risk factor surveys were conducted for the Scottish MONICA Project in North Glasgow in 1986, 1989, 1992, and 1995.⁷ Subjects were randomly recruited from general practitioner lists after stratification into 10 year age and sex groups. A total of 1262 aged . . . [Full text of this article]

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