[Intl-tobacco] About half China's non-smokers breathe second-hand smoke

[robert weissman]

About half China's non-smokers breathe second-hand smoke
10/28/2004, 4:05 p.m. CT
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) =97 Almost half of China's nonsmokers breathe secondhand
smoke at home or at work, a new survey finds.

China should ban smoking at work, where an estimated 74.4 million
nonsmokers inhale other peoples' smoke, Chinese and American researchers
=97 including some from Tulane University =97 said in the November issue of
the American Journal of Public Health.

They said their study, released Thursday, is one of the first detailed
looks at secondhand smoke in China, the world's largest producer and
consumer of tobacco.

Overall, 49 percent of the nonsmokers, or about 139.4 million people
between the ages of 35 and 74, live or work with smokers, according to
the survey for the International Collaborative Study of Cardiovascular
Disease in Asia.

Few Chinese =97 especially in the vast and largely poor rural areas where
most Chinese live =97 know about the dangers of secondhand smoke.

Researchers say such smoke causes thousands of lung cancer deaths a year
in the United States, where less than one-quarter of adults smoke =97 much
lower than the overall 41.4 percent found in the Chinese survey.

Stop-smoking and prevention programs are more urgently needed, since
fewer smokers will automatically mean less secondhand smoke, said
coauthor Jiang He, chair of the epidemiology department at Tulane's
School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

He, whose family name is pronounced "huh", said he knows of one program
in which children at one Shanghai school were taught about secondhand
smoke dangers with the suggestion that they ask their parents to stop.
"The program has been very useful," he said.

More than 18 percent of the estimated 282.9 million nonsmokers aged
35-74 breathe others' exhaled smoke both at home and at work, the
researchers said. That's about 52 million people.

The survey looked at that age group because it is most at risk for
smoking-related diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease.
Other surveys in China have found that younger adults are slightly more
likely to smoke, He said.

Overall, about 117 million middle-aged and older adults, including 108.4
million women, breathe others' smoke at home, the study found. An
overlapping 74.4 million, 53.4 million of them women, breathe secondhand
smoke at work.

The percentage of nonsmokers exposed to others' smoke at work is
relatively low because most rural Chinese are farmers and work outdoors,
He said.

In line with previous studies, this survey of 15,540 adults found that
60 percent of Chinese men are smokers.

However, it estimated that 7 percent of the women in that age group
smoke. Earlier nationwide surveys had about half that figure.

The Chinese surveys cannot be directly compared because they used
different methods, said the researchers from the Chinese Academy of
Medical Sciences, Peking Union Medical College and Tulane University

Another 10 percent of the men and 2 percent of the women used to smoke,
their report said.

That works out to about 163.2 million smokers, 30.4 million former
smokers and 282.9 million nonsmokers in that age group.

Dongfeng Gu of the Chinese academy was lead author of the report; He was
senior author.

Other developing Asian countries have similar smoking rates to China's,
they said.

They said theirs is the first study which can be compared directly to
national studies in other countries, because it uses the same questions
and definitions.

China's 1.27 billion residents make up 20 percent of the world's
population and smoke 30 percent of the world's cigarettes; the Chinese
government is the largest producer of cigarettes in the world.

China has imposed some restrictions on smoking and cigarette advertising
because of tobacco's rising health costs.