Scientists have detected cancer-causing chemicals associated with tobacco smoke in the urine of infants whose parents smoke.

The finding, detailed in the May issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, supports the idea that persistent exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke in childhood can contribute to the development of cancer later in life, said study team member Stephen Hecht of the Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota.

"The take home message is, 'Don't smoke around your kids,'" Hecht said.

The researchers collected urine from 144 infants, aged 3 months to 12 months, who lived in homes where at least one parent was a smoker. Urine from nearly half of the infants contained detectable levels of NNAL, a chemical byproduct produced in the human body when it processes NNK, a cancer-causing chemical, or carcinogen, found only in tobacco.

"You don't find NNAL in urine except in people who are exposed to tobacco smoke, whether they're adults, children or infants," Hecht said.

In the families of babies who had detectable levels of NNAL, family members reported smoking an average of 76 cigarettes per week. For babies who had no detectable levels of NNAL in their urine, the average number of cigarettes reportedly smoked by family members was 27 per week.

Levels of urinary NNAL in the infants were higher than that seen in older children and adults exposed to secondhand smoke. The researchers suspect this is due to infants being less able to move around and avoid the smoke. They also hypothesize that it might not be enough simply to stop smoking in the presence of babies, since NNAL and nicotine could potentially cling to dust and the surfaces of household objects.

A previous study by Hecht and his colleagues indicated that the first urine from newborns whose mothers smoked during pregnancy contained even higher levels of NNAL compared to babies in the current study.

The new research also included a six-month intervention program to help mothers decrease their child's exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke.

(SOURCE: Health Behavior News Service, news release)

FRIDAY, June 29 (HealthDay News)
Promotion of a smoking cessation hotline in the wake of news of anchor Peter Jennings' death more than tripled the number of calls to the hotline, a new study found.

According to Erik Augustson, a behavioral scientist with the National Cancer Institute's Tobacco Control Research Branch, smoking cessation hotlines can be extremely successful, in some cases doubling or tripling quit rates.

In November 2005, ABC News promoted the national 1-800-QUIT-NOW phone number during a series of World News Tonight stories called "Quit to Live: Fighting Lung Cancer." The study, which is in the July/August issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion, examined the response to the promotion.

The hotline links callers to state counselors who give them recommendations about how to quit smoking. The counselors give advice instead of simply referring callers to resources, Augustson said.

"We know that these things work. We know that in general, when people call and participate, the customer satisfaction tends to be very high," he said. "You really talk to a person who talks to you about what's going on (in your life), but very few people use these services."

Before the promotion, in October 2005, the number of calls to the hotline was 9,723. In November 2005, the number jumped to 29,942. Calls fell to 8,966 in December.

The next step is to find more effective ways to promote smoking-cessation hotlines, Augustson said. Putting the phone number on cigarette packs is one idea.

"The flip side of this is that if we increase the traffic to quit lines, we also need to be able to staff them so we can handle that increased traffic," he said. "That represents a significant challenge. These are state-level programs, and state-level funding can wax and wane."

These findings are not surprising, according to Lirio Covey, director of the Smoking Cessation Program at Columbia University Medical Center. It would be more valuable to know what happened to callers in the long term, she said.

But Covey said that promotion of smoking cessation programs is important. "Smoking is so easy to do and stopping so difficult, thus cessation messages can be easy to ignore. The more they are promoted, the more resistance can be addressed."