The Study on Active and Environmental Tobacco Smoke in Biological Samples among High School Students in Korea / 한국역학회지

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The objective of this study was to determine the active and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in biological samples (plasma, saliva and urine) among high school students in Korea. METHODS: Study samples were from 99 nonsmoker or smoking volunteers from high school in Kyungki-do in 2000. ETS was defined as the having smokers of their family members or their friends. Urinary samples were extracted with ethyl ether at pH 10.5, and the extract was injected in GC-NPD. Plasma or saliva was extracted with methylene chloride at pH 10.5 and the quantification was performed with GC-MS (SIM). Peak shapes and quantitation of nicotine and cotinine were excellent, with linear calibration curves over a wide range of 1 to 3000 ng/mL. RESULTS: The results are as followings1. The prevalence of smoking among study subjects were 18.2% among males and 6.1% among females. A 69.7% of total subjects among both males and females were exposed at ETS. 2. The primary metabolite cotinine of nicotine was good indicator of ETS exposure in nonsmokers. Salivary cotinine was found to be highly correlated to the concentration of cotinine in plasma (r=0.9480). 3. Urine cotinine was increased among those with smokers in their family members, while salivary or blood cotinine was increased among with smoking friends. 4. Blood cotinine was highly correlated with salivary cotinine, but it was relatively poorly correlated with urine cotinine. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, the results show how the students in high school in Korea suffer from secondhand smoke. It appeared that salivary cotinine was easy to collect and best way to predict the ETS among adolescents