Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS)

This 2006 pamphlet summarizes some of the findings from a comprehensive review of hundreds of studies of secondhand smoke by the California EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

An independent scientific panel approved the addition of Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) to the Proposition 65 list of chemicals known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm.

Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) was listed as a TAC because of the numerous health effects linked to exposure including development of asthma, heart disease, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, respiratory infections in children, lung cancer and breast cancer.  ETS has been added to the list of TACs which may cause infants and children to be especially susceptible to illness.  A list of TACs is provided, along with the endpoints of most concern, and primary reasons selected.

A comprehensive update of an earlier report first released in 1997 (Cal/EPA, 1997) and later published by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI, 1999), describes the public’s exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and its adverse effects on our health.

OEHHA announced release of its final report, Health Effects of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke.  This overall assessment of ETS includes chapters on respiratory health effects, reproductive and developmental effects, cardiovascular effects, cancers, and exposure measurement and prevalence.