Special Issue "Tobacco Smoking and Public Health"

Assistant Editor
Ms. Gardenia You
MDPI Beijing Office, Liyuanbeijie Road 186, Suite 307, Liyuan Town, Tongzhou District, 101101 Beijing, China
E-Mail:

Guest Editor
Dr. Jennifer Kahende
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention & Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health/Epidemiology Branch, K-50 Atlanta, Georgia, USA
E-Mail:
Interests: tobacco research; public health; health disparities; health economics; HIV/AIDS prevention; health promotion and disease prevention

• - free for readers, with low publishing fees paid by authors or their institutions
• Free publication for manuscripts submitted by end of 2008.
• Rapid publication: accepted papers are immediately published online (we started to publish papers quickly since September 2008). The printed edition will only be continued for the Proceedings of the yearly International Symposiums on Recent Advances in Environmental Health Research starting 2009.

Related Special Issue:

Smoking and Tobacco Control

Special Requirement for this Special Issue

A "Conflict of Interest" statement must be included into the manuscript and added before the References and Notes section.

Submission

The Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601) was launched in 2004 and is an Open Access journal, with the main Editorial Office located in Basel, Switzerland. It has been accepted for coverage in Science Citation Index Expanded, available as the Web of Science and in Current Contents/Agriculture, Biology, and Environmental Sciences. Coverage will begin with the 2009 issues. This journal is also abstracted and indexed very rapidly by Chemical Abstracts, MedLine/PubMed and EMBASE. The IJERPH maintains a rapid editorial procedure and a rigorous peer-review system. Well written papers have been peer-reviewed and published in less than 4 weeks from manuscript submission. All papers published in IJERPH have DOI numbers.

All papers should be submitted to ijerph@mdpi.org with copy to the guest editor. To be published continuously until the deadline and papers will be listed together at this special issue website.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a paper. Open Access publication fees are 300 CHF per paper. English correction fees (250 CHF) will be added in certain cases (550 CHF per paper for those papers that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.). Free publication in open access format for manuscripts submitted in 2008.

• tobacco smoking
• public health
• health effects
• lung cancer, emphysema, and cardiovascular disease
• psychological effects
• cigarette, cigar, pipe, smoking cessation
• anti-tobacco policymaking
• anti-tobacco education programs
• restrictions on cigarette advertising and promotions
• tobacco taxation
• public smoking bans, secondhand tobacco smoke, tobacco consumption reduction

Title: Protecting Children from Passive Smoking: Empirical Evidence and Emerging Issues in China
Author: Aimei Mao, Jude Robinson and Clare Thetford
Affiliation: The Health and Community Care Research Unit, University of Liverpool, UK. E-mail: Maoaimei@liverpool.ac.uk; j.e.robinson@liverpool.ac.uk; clare.thetford@liverpoool.ac.uk.
Abstract: This article assesses the measures undertaken to reduce the tobacco smoke exposure of children in China. Published literature were obtained by searching Chinese and English databases, and studies from the past 10 years were eligible to be included. 10 studies published in Chinese journals were identified. Findings showed that the interventions developed and commissioned by healthcare professionals, and repeated counseling, can reduce children’s exposure to tobacco smoke, and school aged children can be mobilized to protect themselves from smoke. However, limitations in the ways in which the research was presented raises questions about the reliability of the findings.

Title: A Review of Children’s Exposure to Tobacco Smoke in China
Author: Aimei Mao, Jude Robinson and Clare Thetford
Affiliation: The Health and Community Care Research Unit, University of Liverpool, UK. E-mail: Maoaimei@liverpool.ac.uk; j.e.robinson@liverpool.ac.uk; clare.thetford@liverpoool.ac.uk.
Abstract: This article reviews the studies currently published on children’s exposure to tobacco smoke in China. Nine surveys were identified from both Chinese and English databases, and rates of exposure ranged from 33.5% to 59.6% among children under 15 years old, except for infants among whom rates were much lower. Households were the principle sites of exposure for children, and paternal smoking was the main source. Findings suggest that children’s demographic and social status is associated with exposure levels. Critically, data from current studies are insufficient to provide evidence for the development of tobacco control programs to protect children.

Title: Smoking Out the Legacy of Tobacco Additives
Author: Urmila Jagadeesan Nair
Affiliation: German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Unit of Cancer Prevention & WHO Collaborating Centre for Tobacco Control, Heidelberg, Germany; E-mail: u.nair@dkfz-heidelberg.de
Abstract: The tobacco industry uses around 600 declared additives, most of them having a GRAS categorisation only for the unburnt substance. The use of additives was justified to facilitate low tar and nicotine products, which have now been discredited, thus invalidating that justification. This review summarizes published studies on tobacco ingredients/additives with a special focus on their biochemical and pharmacological functions. Their mechanism of action in the increased exposure to nicotine and tobacco smoke carcinogens and the subsequent health consequences is critically evaluated and discussed. Conclusion: There is now a sufficiently large scientific basis to justify the banning of cigarette additives to curtail the menace of initiation, promotion and exposure to tobacco smoking.

Title: Estimated Time for Occurrence of Smoking-Related Consequences among Pregnant and Non-Pregnant Women
Authors: Monica Ortendahl
Abstract: Objectives: To study time estimates by women smokers for when smoking-related consequences will occur given continuing or quitting smoking, and the relationship of these estimates to pregnancy and intent to quit smoking. Methods: Over a two-week period, eighty women, with four subgroups formed by pregnant/ non-pregnant and trying/not trying to quit smoking, rated times at which they would expect smoking-related consequences to occur given continuing or quitting smoking.
Results: Somatic health consequences were estimated to occur later than consequences related to mood and social relations. All consequences were estimated to occur later given quitting smoking. Conclusion: Health messages should stress consequences for somatic health in quitting smoking, since outcomes later in time might have too low a value to exert a positive effect on decisions to quit smoking.
Keywords: smoking, pregnancy, quitting, consequences