WHO to publish Policy Recommendations on Protection from Exposure to Second-Hand Tobacco Smoke

In light of the strong scientific evidence on the causation of death and disease by exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke, the World Health Organization (WHO) will publish new Policy Recommendations on this pressing public health issue in the fall of 2006.

These Policy Recommendations have their scientific basis in conclusions of three major reports published over the last two years on the health effects of second-hand tobacco smoke: Monograph 83 published in 2004 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the 2005 California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) Environmental Health Hazard Assessment of Environmental Tobacco Smoke, and the 2006 U.S. Surgeon General's Report on the Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke. WHO has not completed a new, independent review of the evidence but has relied on these comprehensive and recent reports.

All three reports convey the same public health message: second-hand tobacco smoke causes disease and death in children and adults who do not smoke, and the scientific evidence indicates that there is no safe level of exposure to second-hand smoke. This overall finding is the basis of WHO's Policy Recommendations.

This overwhelming evidence compels WHO to take action through publication of these Policy Recommendations and to urge policy makers to protect the public, and especially children, women, and people at their workplaces, from exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke.

At the same time, WHO will be publishing the CalEPA Report to increase accessibility to a comprehensive summary on this subject that has not yet been made formally available in print.

IARC Monograph 83 is available at: http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol83/volume83.pdf

The CalEPA Report is available at: http://repositories.cdlib.org/tc/surveys/CALEPA2005/or http://www.arb.ca.gov/regact/ets2006/ets2006.htm

The 2006 report of the U.S. Surgeon General is available at: http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke

Please note, with its Policy Recommendations, WHO makes no judgment or statement as to the superiority of scientific evidence contained in one existing report over another on the subject.