Misclassification of Smoking Habits and Passive Smoking : A Review of the Evidence

How accurate are statements about smoking habits? This book presents the results of a comprehensive review in which the literature on the subject is newly interpreted. It is shown that smokers are misclassified as non-smokers in epidemiological studies often enough to explain the increased lung cancer risk seen in self-reported non-smokers in relation to their spouse's smoking habits. This study overturns the commonly held view that increased risk is a consequence of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and highlights the difficulty of making valid inferences from epidemiological data. No-one should draw conclusions about passive smoking before reading this book! Front Matter....Pages I-XIII Introduction....Pages 1-6 General Considerations....Pages 7-16 Evidence on Misclassification....Pages 17-61 Overview and Unanswered Questions....Pages 62-64 Back Matter....Pages 65-103