Published: December 23, 2003
If you're looking for a nice smoky place, it is hard to do better than some casinos.
So when scientists from the University of Minnesota wanted to see how people were affected by secondhand tobacco smoke, they asked a group of volunteers to roam among the slot machines and gambling tables for a while to see what happened.
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After just four hours or so, the volunteers had significant amounts of a biochemical marker in their urine traceable only to a known carcinogen in tobacco, the researchers reported yesterday. Writing in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, a medical journal, they said the study was the first to look at carcinogen levels in people exposed to smoke in a commercial setting.
"This is a logical finding," the lead author, Dr. Kristin E. Anderson, an epidemiologist, said. "We were not surprised by these data. But no one has ever shown this."
Whether secondhand smoke has been definitively linked to cancer is an open question among scientists, said Dr. Tobias Kurth, a neurologist at Harvard and at Brigham and Women's Hospital, who has studied the health effects of smoking. Many scientists suspect that this is the case, and some studies have reported a connection. But proving that has been extremely hard.
Dr. Kurth praised the new study for finding an "important link" and said it could help establish the connection.
"You get link after link," he said, "and maybe after 10 years you know it because of these links."
For the study, the researchers recruited 20 volunteers and asked them to spend time in a casino identified only by its location, the upper Midwest. Although their exposure to the smoke was limited, the researchers said they had to wrestle with a number of ethical issues in creating the study.
"We thought about this a lot," Dr. Anderson said.
Apart from the ethics of exposing people to smoke — no matter how short the time — there was also the question of exposing them to gambling, which can also be addictive, and whether that was right.
"We didn't want to introduce anybody to a casino for the first time," Dr. Anderson said.
The researchers decided to recruit people who were occasional visitors to casinos and told them to do whatever they would normally do. A University of Minnesota institutional review board looked at the ethical issues and approved the research.
The volunteers were chosen if they were generally in good health. They could not take part if they had had "even a puff" of tobacco smoke in the two previous years or lived with a smoker or worked in a place that regularly had tobacco smoke. In the days before going to the casino, they were also asked to avoid tobacco smoke.
Before entering the casino, the volunteers provided urine samples for the researchers to establish base line levels of the carcinogen marker, NNK. Two people were excluded because their baseline NNK was too high. Two others were excluded because their samples were too small.
Urine samples were taken again over the 24 hours after the volunteers left the casino. When the samples were analyzed, they showed significantly elevated levels of the marker, the study said. The findings, the researchers said, raise important public health questions.
"We looked at people who went in there for four hours," the senior author, Dr. Stephen S. Hecht, said. "But how about the people who work there? Their exposure is going to be higher."
Even scientists who believe that secondhand smoke is hazardous acknowledge that its risk pales compared with smoking cigarettes directly. But people with sustained exposure to smoke may face a real threat to their health, the researchers said.
Many casinos, including the one in the study, use sophisticated ventilation systems. But the body still absorbs carcinogens, the study found.
"I don't think filtration systems are the answer," Dr. Hecht said. "I think that's going to be a huge waste of money. The answer is to get rid of smoking from public spaces."@@
If you're looking for a nice smoky place, it is hard to do better than some casinos.
So when scientists from the University of Minnesota wanted to see how people were affected by secondhand tobacco smoke, they asked a group of volunteers to roam among the slot machines and gambling tables for a while to see what happened.
Advertisement
After just four hours or so, the volunteers had significant amounts of a biochemical marker in their urine traceable only to a known carcinogen in tobacco, the researchers reported yesterday. Writing in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, a medical journal, they said the study was the first to look at carcinogen levels in people exposed to smoke in a commercial setting.
"This is a logical finding," the lead author, Dr. Kristin E. Anderson, an epidemiologist, said. "We were not surprised by these data. But no one has ever shown this."
Whether secondhand smoke has been definitively linked to cancer is an open question among scientists, said Dr. Tobias Kurth, a neurologist at Harvard and at Brigham and Women's Hospital, who has studied the health effects of smoking. Many scientists suspect that this is the case, and some studies have reported a connection. But proving that has been extremely hard.
Dr. Kurth praised the new study for finding an "important link" and said it could help establish the connection.
"You get link after link," he said, "and maybe after 10 years you know it because of these links."
For the study, the researchers recruited 20 volunteers and asked them to spend time in a casino identified only by its location, the upper Midwest. Although their exposure to the smoke was limited, the researchers said they had to wrestle with a number of ethical issues in creating the study.
"We thought about this a lot," Dr. Anderson said.
Apart from the ethics of exposing people to smoke — no matter how short the time — there was also the question of exposing them to gambling, which can also be addictive, and whether that was right.
"We didn't want to introduce anybody to a casino for the first time," Dr. Anderson said.
The researchers decided to recruit people who were occasional visitors to casinos and told them to do whatever they would normally do. A University of Minnesota institutional review board looked at the ethical issues and approved the research.
The volunteers were chosen if they were generally in good health. They could not take part if they had had "even a puff" of tobacco smoke in the two previous years or lived with a smoker or worked in a place that regularly had tobacco smoke. In the days before going to the casino, they were also asked to avoid tobacco smoke.
Before entering the casino, the volunteers provided urine samples for the researchers to establish base line levels of the carcinogen marker, NNK. Two people were excluded because their baseline NNK was too high. Two others were excluded because their samples were too small.
Urine samples were taken again over the 24 hours after the volunteers left the casino. When the samples were analyzed, they showed significantly elevated levels of the marker, the study said. The findings, the researchers said, raise important public health questions.
"We looked at people who went in there for four hours," the senior author, Dr. Stephen S. Hecht, said. "But how about the people who work there? Their exposure is going to be higher."
Even scientists who believe that secondhand smoke is hazardous acknowledge that its risk pales compared with smoking cigarettes directly. But people with sustained exposure to smoke may face a real threat to their health, the researchers said.
Many casinos, including the one in the study, use sophisticated ventilation systems. But the body still absorbs carcinogens, the study found.
"I don't think filtration systems are the answer," Dr. Hecht said. "I think that's going to be a huge waste of money. The answer is to get rid of smoking from public spaces."@@
