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Abstract
The harmful effects of secondhand tobacco smoke exposure (STSE) has on children and adults has been widely discussed and combatted through public health campaigns over the past two decades but no emphasis has been placed on the risk involved to household pets. This systematic review aims to highlight research associating risk of TSE and disease development in pets, as well as introduce new research implicating that exposed animals are a potential risk to human health through third hand smoke exposure (TTSE). A literature review was completed to establish association between TSE and disease in pets and provide recent research developments that pose new questions for human health. The review confirmed that there's ample evidence of risk of disease development in animals exposed to various routes of tobacco smoke exposure. Results also showed that there's risk of third hand smoke exposure to humans from pets exposed to STSE and ETS. There's significant data to provide the basis for a public health campaign targeted at increasing awareness on the effects STSE and ETS has on pets. Further research is needed in regards to establishing risk of third hand smoke exposure in humans through inhalation from exposed pets.
Keywords: Tobacco smoke exposure, secondhand smoke exposure, thirdhand smoke exposure, canine, feline, pets, environmental pollutants, addiction, nicotine, nasal cavity, atopic dermatitis, urinary cotinine, cancer, heart disease, lung disease
Introduction
The harmful effects of tobacco smoking and initiatives to create awareness in communities around the globe has been an important public health topic over the past two decades. According to the American Lung Association (1), tobacco smoking causes around 443,000 deaths per year; even more alarming is that since 1964 there has been a total of 2,500,000 deaths from exposure to secondhand smoke (1). One of the first public smoking bans was on airplanes around 1990 (2), and in the past decade there has been an exponential concern over the effects of second-hand tobacco smoke exposure in humans but minimal for animals. Research has been published detailing how secondhand tobacco smoke exposure causes just as much harm to animals as it does humans; there's increased risk of nasal, lung and heart disease as well as cancer and skin related issues. If household pets are exposed to second-hand smoke (SHS)...