Effect of home environment tobacco smoke on family health.

A random telephone sampling was conducted of 2150 households in Detroit 363 in Long Beach and 161 in Pasadena to elucidate the relationship of the presence of tobacco smoke in the home and the prevalence of illness in children. It was found that children subjected to tobacco smoke have a greater prevalence of respiratory illness than other children especially if the children themselves smoke. Chronic illnesses occurred in similar numbers among children subjected to smoke and children not subjected to smoke. When analyzed by type of respiratory illness there were a greater number of children subject to smoke in each disease category. In addition this finding was also true of adult nonsmokers in smoke-exposed households. The fact that the respiratory illness rates of nonsmokers were similar to those of smokers may be due to smokers perceiving themselves as well even though they have symptoms of respiratory illness simply because they always have these symptoms. Further research is being conducted on the effect of air pollution on the physical health of residents.