BRIEF ABSTRACT

Journal Name: Am J Health Promot 2004; 18[5]:358-365.

Title: Prevalence and patterns of environmental tobacco smoke exposures among California teachers.

Authors: Reynolds P, Goldberg DE, Hurley S, and The California Teachers Study Steering Committee.

California Department of Health Services, Environmental Health Investigations Branch, Oakland, CA 94612, USA. preynold@dhs.ca.gov

Purpose:  This study describes the prevalence and patterns of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure in a large, well-defined cohort of professional, female, school employees in California (United States).

Design:  The cohort was established from respondents to a 1995 mailing sent to all 329,000 active and retired female enrollees in the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS).  Members are employed in approximately 1,160 California public school districts, community college districts, county education offices and state reporting entities.

Setting:  California, (United States).

Subjects:  Our analyses focused on lifetime non-smokers (n = 61,899) in the cohort who responded to detailed questions on lifetime ETS exposures in the home, workplace, and other social settings.

Measures:  We analyzed subjects' demographic characteristics, smoking status and ETS exposure based on self-reported data from two follow-up surveys.  We compared prevalence estimates within the cohort to those from the California Behavioral Risk Factor Survey and the adult California Tobacco Survey.

Results:  ETS exposures were highest for never-smokers born in the 1930s and steadily declined among participants born in later years.  ETS exposure from spousal smoking peaked during the 1950s.  In the 1980s, the workplace replaced the household as the primary exposure setting.

Conclusions:  Consideration of these patterns in the prevalence of ETS exposures is important in the interpretation and design of tobacco-related health studies.

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