Assessment of air quality in Barcelona by personal monitoring of nonsmokers for respirable suspended particles and environmental tobacco smoke

Personal monitoring over a 24-h period was performed using over 190 subjects divided into two distinct groups, one for housewives and one for office workers. Questionnaire surveys were conducted in addition to determinations for respirable suspended particles (RSP), environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) particles, nicotine, 3-ethenylpyridine, and saliva cotinine. The highest median levels of RSP, ETS particles, and nicotine were measured for subjects working in smoking workplaces. However, workers living in smoking households were more exposed outside working hours since more time was spent outside the workplace. These subjects, based upon median levels (90th percentile in parentheses), would be exposed each year to between 5.2 and 8.4 (26 and 40) cigarette equivalents (CE) outside the workplace compared with approximately 3.5 (13) CE at work. The lowest median levels were recorded for housewives living in nonsmoking households, equivalent to an exposure of approximately 1 CE per y. Subjective assessments of ETS exposure over the monitoring periods made by subjects on two separate occasions were considered to be consistent with measured concentrations. Subjects were not considered to have taken the length of time spent in any one environment into consideration, the ETS concentration rather than ''overall exposure'' having been assessed. Saliva cotinine measurements were used during the course of this investigation as a tool for determining misclassification of smoking status rather than a marker for ETS exposure. Using a cut-off level of 25 ng mL(-1), between 10.5% and 17.8% of the subjects were found to have misclassified themselves as nonsmokers, depending upon the criteria used. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.