Second hand smoking among schoolchildren in the region of Sousse

Abstract

Background: Secondhand smoke (SHS) contains an estimated 4000 toxic chemicals and is a serious health hazard to non-smokers. Exposure to tobacco smoke causes extremely serious damages, placing exposed persons at increased risk of a number of adverse health outcomes, such as asthma, lung cancer and cardiovascular diseases. In this context, this work was carried out in order to evaluate exposure to smoking among schoolchildren in the region of Sousse. Methods: We conducted a cross sectional design study among a representative sample of students from all colleges in the delegation of Sousse Jawhra and Sousse Erriadh. We used an Arabic, pre tested and self administered questionnaire to collect data about Socio -demographic characteristics and student's smoking behavior. Results: Our population was composed of 2170 students. Girls accounted for 1100 (51.3%) and 1070 (48.7%) boys. The mean age of our population was 13.23±(1,19). The prevalence of smoking in our population was 4.8%. In the month preceding our study 75% of our population was exposed to a second-hand smoking. 36.7 % was exposed at home and almost one third (27.3%) at school. But second hand smoking was affecting smoking and non smoking students. We noticed that 74.5% of non smoker were exposed to secondhand smoking despite the that the majority (92.0 %) knew that second hand smoking is dangerous . We highlighted also that non-smokers were significantly more in favor of implementing tobacco control laws (94.6% vs 94% of smokers ; p=0.02). Conclusions: Exposure to an involuntary smoke is an urgent issue, because there is no safe level of SHS exposure, even minimal exposure is harmful. And as we noticed the Second hand smoking is very high among students in the Sousse region. Therefore there is an urgent need for a program to prevent and control this scourge of active and passive smoking among schoolchildren.