Apartment-dwelling children, tobacco-smoke exposure -- and a new front in the tobacco wars?

Tobacco smoke doesn’t concern itself with doors or privacy. It goes where it wants, even through ventilation systems, walls, shared air spaces. Such invasiveness could be a particular problem for children who live in apartments.

So suggests a report published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics. Here’s the short version of that children-and-smoke study -- and the full version, for those so inclined.

Using national health survey data, researchers established that, among kids not living with someone who smoked inside the home, those who lived in apartments were exposed to substantially higher levels of tobacco smoke than were those in stand-alone homes, as gauged by blood levels of cotinine, a metabolic byproduct of nicotine.

Related: Even whiff of cigarette smoke can hurt, surgeon general report says

The connection between more smokers in the vicinity and more smoke exposure may seem obvious in a way, but the reasons for the concern -- and thus the need to quantify the connection -- is clear.

The National Cancer Institute (none too fond of secondhand smoke) offers this fact sheet on secondhand exposure to tobacco smoke.

The researchers seem to support a tougher policy on smoking in apartment buidlings. They conclude: “Ultimately, smoke-free multiunit housing could improve health status byreducing nonsmokers’ exposure to tobacco smoke in their own units.”

It would seem apartments, especially public housing, could become the next front in the tobacco wars. Such a stance already has some supporters, as reflected in this earlier Booster Shots post: Smoking ban in public housing would be good for public health, advocates say.