Health Impact of Tobacco and Cooking Smoke

As it is known, cigarettes smoking can harm people’s health. But a recent study found that tobacco smoke could possibly harm cardiovascular function too.

The scientists found evidence that an increase in air pollution is linked with an increase in heart attacks and deaths.

The main air pollutants are tobacco and cooking oil smoke, which contain fine particles that evoke responses from heart and blood vessels indicating effects on their function.

Scientists studied 40 healthy non-smokers (21 women, 19 men) with average age of 35 years old which were briefly exposed to low levels of common pollutants, and their cardiovascular and cardio respiratory responses were measured.

The researchers exposed the participants to second-hand cigarette smoke, wood smoke or cooking oil smoke in separate trials as they sat in a 10-by-10-foot environmental chamber. The researchers cleared the air in the chamber after each trial.

At the end of the investigation they measured respiratory and cardiovascular function-including heart rate variability, breathing and blood pressure, which in turn gave a picture of how the heart, circulatory and respiratory systems were reacting to the pollutants.

According to this research was found that, especially among men, which were exposed to smoke changed breathing patterns, raised blood pressure oscillations in peripheral arteries and shifted control of heart rate toward sympathetic domination.

These results confirm results from earlier studies, but with exposures that were at lower levels and for shorter lengths of time. The study also extended the findings in several ways, including finding that men and women respond differently.