The economic burden of exposure to secondhand smoke for child and adult never smokers residing in U.S. public housing

Health Outcomes

• 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 Measured:

• 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:

• 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)

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 Evaluation / Methods and Source

Citation:

• Mason J, Wheeler W, and Brown MJ. 2015. The economic burden of exposure to secondhand smoke for child and adult never smokers residing in U.S. public housing. Public Health Rep.
• Pubmed
• DOI: (Not available)

NIEHS Funding: (Not available)

Other Funding: (Not available)