Feasibility of Measuring Tobacco Smoke Air Pollution in Homes: Report from a Pilot Study

Laura Rosen, David Zucker, Melbourne Hovell, Nili Brown, Amit Ram and Vicki Myers
Additional contact information
Laura Rosen: Department of Health Promotion, School of Public Health, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
David Zucker: Department of Statistics, Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel
Melbourne Hovell: Center for Behavioral Epidemiology and Community Health, Graduate School of Public Health, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92123, USA
Nili Brown: Department of Health Promotion, School of Public Health, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
Amit Ram: Department of Health Promotion, School of Public Health, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
Vicki Myers: Department of Health Promotion, School of Public Health, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

IJERPH, 2015, vol. 12, issue 12, 1-14

Abstract: Tobacco smoke air pollution (TSAP) measurement may persuade parents to adopt smoke-free homes and thereby reduce harm to children from tobacco smoke in the home. In a pilot study involving 29 smoking families, a Sidepak was used to continuously monitor home PM 2.5 during an 8-h period, Sidepak and/or Dylos monitors provided real-time feedback, and passive nicotine monitors were used to measure home air nicotine for one week. Feedback was provided to participants in the context of motivational interviews. Home PM 2.5 levels recorded by continuous monitoring were not well-accepted by participants because of the noise level. Also, graphs from continuous monitoring showed unexplained peaks, often associated with sources unrelated to indoor smoking, such as cooking, construction, or outdoor sources. This hampered delivery of a persuasive message about the relationship between home smoking and TSAP. By contrast, immediate real-time PM 2.5 feedback (with Sidepak or Dylos monitor) was feasible and provided unambiguous information; the Dylos had the additional advantages of being more economical and quieter. Air nicotine sampling was complicated by the time-lag for feedback and questions regarding shelf-life. Improvement in the science of TSAP measurement in the home environment is needed to encourage and help maintain smoke-free homes and protect vulnerable children. Recent advances in the use of mobile devices for real-time feedback are promising and warrant further development, as do accurate methods for real-time air nicotine air monitoring.

Keywords: children’s health; environmental exposure; tobacco smoke exposure (TSE); secondhand smoke (SHS); air quality (AQ); environmental tobacco smoke (ETS); respirable suspended particles (RSP); particulate matter (PM); environmental monitoring; smoke-free homes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/12/14970/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/12/14970/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:12:y:2015:i:12:p:14970-15142:d:59603

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().