MINNEAPOLIS, MN (May 10, 2005) – Employees who do not smoke but work in restaurants and bars where smoking is permitted have significantly higher levels of nicotine and cancer-causing toxins in their body on working days compared to nonworking days.

This is the finding of a study led by the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC) at the Masonic Cancer Center. It is the first study to show that nonsmoking restaurant and bar employees who are exposed to environmental tobacco smoke, better known as secondhand smoke, breathe in substantial amounts of a cancer-promoting substance. The results of the entire study will be published in the May 10, 2005 issue of the journal, Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

“Our study found that nonsmoking employees had up to 25 times higher levels of total nicotine in their urine, and up to 4.5 times more NNAL, a by-product of a potent lung cancer-causing toxin, on days they worked at their jobs in restaurants and bars compared to days they were not at work,” says Dorothy Hatsukami, Ph.D., co-director of the TTURC and co-leader of the Cancer Prevention and Etiology Program at the Masonic Cancer Center, who led the research on this study. “Furthermore, most of our study participants had amounts of total NNAL that were above the levels of nonexposure, even on days when they were not working. This means the carcinogen stays in their body for a period of time.”

The findings substantiate a previous Masonic Cancer Center study that showed casino patrons have a significantly higher level of cancer-causing toxins in their body after visiting a casino. Other research has also estimated that restaurant and bar employees who do not smoke have about a 50 percent higher risk of lung cancer than the general population. This risk has been related in part to exposure to secondhand smoke.

“Our results provide further evidence that secondhand tobacco smoke in restaurants and bars presents a potential health hazard to employees and nonsmoking patrons, and underscore the need to ban smoking in worksites and public places to protect the health of employees and the public,” Hatsukami says.

More about the research study

This study involved 20 nonsmoking participants who did not use tobacco and who worked a minimum 6-hour shift in a restaurant or bar that permitted smoking. Each participant collected urine samples for 24 hours on working and non-working days. Researchers analyzed the samples for presence of total nicotine, cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine, and NNAL, a measure of uptake of a potent lung carcinogen found in tobacco products. The researchers found significantly higher levels of these measures of toxin exposure on working days compared to nonworking days.

Funding for this study came from the National Institutes on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, and the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute.  

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Media Contact: Mary Lawson, Public Relations Director, Masonic Cancer Center, 612-624-6165, 612-363-6971 (cell), mlawson@umn.edu.