On Thursday, a new smoking-related government study was released. As it turned out, good news can also come out of such studies. There is a bad part accompanying it of course: about half the nonsmoking US population still has to inhale cigarette smoke. The good news however is that this percentage is the result of a significant decline of the values recorded in the early 1990s.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, such an evolution was made possible through law-based efforts to ban smoking in public spaces such as bars, restaurants and workspaces.  The study found that around 46% of nonsmokers showing the presence of nicotine in their blood (tests have been carried out during the 1999-2004 period). Tests dating from the late 1980s and early 1990s came up with a surprising percentage of 84%.

As Terry Pechacek, associate director for science in the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health, said, blood tests are of paramount importance in finding a wide range of problems and that people usually underestimate the gravity of being exposed to secondhand smoke. This type of smoke, carrying numerous dangerous chemicals, is responsible for the increase by at least 20% of lung cancer risk and for that of heart disease by about 25 %.

Secondhand smoke also seriously affects children, as it increases the chance for them to develop asthma attacks, ear problems as well as the currently widely covered by the media sudden infant death syndrome.

Another positive aspect of the study consists in the fact that the number of adult smokers has dropped below 20% (as found in 2007 CDC records). The study was a very complete one, as it gathered data from more than 17,000 nonsmokers, with ages over 4.