Mortality is increased by around 15% in people who have never smoked but live with a smoker. Hill and colleagues (p 988) retrospectively examined mortality in two cohorts of New Zealand adults who never smoked, contributing a total of about 19 000 deaths and 2 million person years of observation. Never smokers with domestic exposure to secondhand smoke had consistently higher mortality than those living in non-smoking households. These findings add to the weight of evidence for the adverse health effects of passive smoking, say the authors, and highlight the need to protect the public from exposure to other people's tobacco smoke.
Figure 1.
Credit: SHEILA TERRY/SPL