Secondhand Smoke Enhances Lung Cancer Risk in Male Smokers: An Interaction

Conclusions:
High level of SHS exposure greatly enhanced lung cancer risk among current smokers, consistent with an additive interaction; while this interaction was predominant for the squamous carcinoma. The results provide new evidence to the rationale of promoting global smoking cessation.

Implications:
Some indoor air pollutants can interact with active smoking, yielding a synergistic effect on inducing lung cancer. SHS, with noticeable differences from active smoking, is a major source of indoor air pollution. However, little has been known about the effect of SHS in smokers and whether there is a similar interaction between SHS and active smoking. In this study, we evaluated their separate and joint effects and indeed found a more than additive interaction between them. This finding suggests a potential problem of gathering smoking aggravating by venue restriction policies and re-advocates policy efforts on smoking cessation.

Source: Nicotine and Tobacco Research - October 7, 2016 Category: Addiction Authors: Li, W., Tse, L. A., Au, J. S. K., Wang, F., Qiu, H., Yu, I. T.-S. Tags: Original Investigation Source Type: research