HEALTH : Passive Smoking Perils Stressed

A study found that 91% of nonsmokers were regularly exposed to high levels of cigarette smoke, suggesting that the Environmental Protection Agency has underestimated the risk of passive smoking, a researcher says.

Dr. Michael Cummings of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., also said childhood exposure to parents’ cigarette smoke could be a greater risk than an adult nonsmoker’s exposure to a spouse’s or colleague’s smoke.

If that is correct, lung cancer could be about to increase among nonsmokers of the “baby boom” generation, a result of their parents’ widespread adoption of smoking after World War II, Cummings said.

He presented his findings Tuesday at a meeting of an EPA panel considering the merits of the agency’s draft passive smoking study, which concludes that cigarette smoke is a known cause of cancer in nonsmokers.