1996 Volume 62 Issue 5 Pages 260-266
In order to assess the effect of passive smoking at home, 39 female junior college students and their mothers were surveyed concerning paternal smoking habits and asked to provide early morning urine samples in which the concentrations of cotinine (COT) and hydroxyproline (HOP) were measured. The concentration of urinary COT per gm creatinine (COT/Cr) of smoker was 1, 000 μg/g or more. There was no correlation between the number of cigarettes smoked per day by the father and the concentration of COT/Cr of either the mother or daughter. Their levels of COT/Cr remained 0-30μg/g irrespective of the father's smoking. The cases in which no COT was detected in either daughters or mothers were actually more frequent with heavier paternal smoking. There was also no relationship between the father's smoking and the concentration of HOP/Cr of the daughters and their mothers. One possible explanation of these findings may be that fathers who smoke at home do so outside of the room. Smoking by mothers was also found to not increase the concentration of COT/Cr of their daughters or rather low level of 5 μg/g. Thus, passive smoke at home did not show any effects on nicotine metabolite of daughters and mothers. The COT/Cr levels of daughters did increase significantly by 61 percent from 11.0 μg/g, as the result of a one hour exposure to heavy smoke in a meeting room.
