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Excerpts from: CDC: Progress on Secondhand Smoke, Lead

 By DANIEL YEE Associated Press http://www.newsday.com [01/31/03]
To view the Report http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/
 

ATLANTA -- Public health efforts have helped reduce the amount of chemicals from secondhand cigarette smoke and lead in the body, although they are still too high in many people, federal officials reported Friday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took blood and urine samples from 2,500 people in 1999 and 2000 and tested for 116 different chemicals, including metals, pesticides, insect repellants and disinfectants.

The CDC called the study the "most extensive assessment ever" of Americans' exposure to environmental chemicals, and both an environmental group and a chemical industry group praised it.

To gauge the effect of secondhand smoke, the CDC tested for cotinine, a product of nicotine after it enters the body, in nonsmokers. Levels dropped by 75 percent for nonsmoking adults and 58 percent for children in 1999-2000 compared with the early 1990s, the CDC said.

But blacks had more than twice the cotinine levels of whites or Mexican-Americans, the CDC said. And cotinine levels for children were twice as high as levels for nonsmoking adults.

CDC officials believe children's exposure to chemicals from secondhand smoke may be higher because public health efforts in the 1990s primarily focused on reducing secondhand smoke in adult areas, such as in the workplace. In addition, CDC officials said, children may absorb more from their environment than adults.

"What we are looking at now is that we have now a group we need to specifically target and think of new things to do to reduce their exposure" to secondhand smoke, said Dr. Jim Pirkle, deputy director of science for the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health.