Primary school children’s exposure to secondhand smoke at home in selected communes of Chuong My district, Ha Noi, 2011

Abstract

     The study entitled “Exposure to secondhand smoke at home of primary school students in some selected communes in Chuong My district, Ha Noi, 2011” is part of the PhD thesis “Developing an intervention model - Children Say No to Secondhand Smoke”, conducted from 2011 to 2014.

Children from 8 to 11 years of age in 3 primary schools of Chuong My district, Ha Noi were covered by the study. The purpose of the study was to identify the exposure of children at primary school age with secondhand smoke (SHS) at home as well as identify some associations with the exposure to SHS at home.  The study results showed that 66.0% of recruited children reported to live with smokers at home, and 52.4% of children reported to be exposed to SHS within a week prior to the study. The study indicated some associations with the exposure of children to SHS at home, such as age, smoking inside the house of smokers, poor attitudes and poor practices of children against exposure to SHS at home.

The study proposed certain recommendations, for example to broaden the study into a larger scale, to validate children’s exposure to SHS by some biomarkers such as to test for saliva or urinary cotinine level, as well as to explore children’s capacity in reducing their exposure to SHS at home.