Measurements of passive smoking and estimates of lung cancer risk among non-smoking Chinese females.

Lifetime exposures to environmental tobacco smoke from the home or workplace for 88 "never-smoked" female lung cancer patients and 137 "never-smoked" district controls were estimated in Hong Kong to assess the possible causal relationship of passive smoking to lung cancer risk. Relative risks based on the husband's smoking habits, or lifetime estimates of total years, total hours, mean hours/day, or total cigarettes/day smoked by each household smoker did not show dose-response results. Similarly, when such categories as mean hours/day, or earlier age of initial exposure, were combined with years of exposure, there were no apparent increases in relative risk. However, when the data were segregated by histological type and location of the primary tumor, it was seen that peripheral tumors in the middle or lower lobes, or, less strongly, squamous or small-cell tumors in the middle or lower lobes, had increasing relative risks that might indicate some association with passive smoking exposure.