Health Outcomes

Health Outcome List:

• Morbidity and mortality associated with: cancer outcomes (lung cancer)
• cardiovascular outcomes (ischemic heart disease)
• respiratory outcomes (asthma, lower respiratory infection – syncytial virus, pneumonia, bronchitis/bronchiolitis)
• birth outcomes (low birth weight)
• sudden infant death syndrome
• otitis media

Environmental Agents

List of Environmental Agents:

• Air pollutants (secondhand smoke)

Source of Environmental Agents:

• Secondhand smoke

Economic Evaluation / Methods and Source

Type:

• Cost analysis (CA)

Cost Measures:

• Costs considered in source studies, including direct medical costs (e.g., hospitalizations, physician’s visits, medications)
• costs of productivity loss (e.g., caregiver time lost from work or school due to illness)
• nonmedical direct costs

Potential Cost Measures:

• SHS-attributable fire-related and apartment renovation costs
• implementation costs of smoke-free policies
• costs borne by society (e.g., long-term care, copayments, other nonmedical direct expenses)
• intangible cost of SHS-exposure related health effects (e.g., pain and suffering)

Benefits Measures:

• Not available

Potential Benefits Measures:

• Lower out-of-pocket expenditures for medical care
• lower apartment clean-up costs
• fewer productivity losses for employers and society

Location:

• United States

Models Used:

• Not available

Models References:

• Not available

Methods Used:

• The authors estimated the public health and economic burden of secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure for child and adult never smokers living in U.S. public housing using large-scale databases, including biomarker data. The authors — 1) estimated the public health burden attributable to SHS for health outcomes by calculating a population-attributable fraction using WHO estimates of relative risk; 2) estimated annual societal economic burdens for each health outcome using published estimates for direct medical costs, nonmedical care costs, and the value of lost productivity; and 3) estimated the public health and economic burden for two serum cotinine limits of detection.

Sources Used:

• 2009 National Youth Tobacco Survey; 2010 National Health Interview Survey; National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2007-2008, 2009-2010); Second-hand smoke: assessing the burden of disease at national and local levels (Öberg et al./WHO, 2010); additional sources cited in publication

Economic Citation / Fundings

Citation:

• Mason J, Wheeler W, and Brown MJ. The economic burden of exposure to secondhand smoke for child and adult never smokers residing in U.S. public housing. Public Health Rep. 2015. 130; 3.
• Pubmed

NIEHS Funding:

• Not available

Other Funding:

• Not available