Not that you needed more reasons to quit smoking, especially if you have children in the house, but a new study has tied secondhand smoke exposure to mental illness. The study was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, which is a publication run by the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“A growing body of literature has demonstrated the harmful physical health effects of secondhand smoke exposure,” the authors wrote. “Given the highly prevalent exposure to secondhand smoke — in the United States, an estimated 60 percent of American nonsmokers had biological evidence of exposure to secondhand smoke — even a low level of risk may have a major public health impact.”
Mark Hamer of University College London was lead researcher on the study. He and his colleagues studied 5,560 adults with an average age of 49.8 who were non-smokers along side 2,595 smokers with an average age of 44.8. None of the subjects, pulled from the Scottish Health Survey in 1998 and or 2003, had a history of mental health problems.
Secondhand smoke exposure evaluations were based on levels of cotinine found in saliva, which is the main element formed by the body when it processes nicotine. The study found that smokers and non-smokers who had high exposure to secondhand smoke, a cotinine level between .70 and 15 micrograms per liter, showed a high rate of clinical psychological problems than those who had no cotinine in their system.
Smokers and those with high secondhand exposure were more likely to be hospitalized for schizophrenia, depression, delirium and other psychological conditions.
