CORP Author |
Health Effects Research Lab., Research Triangle Park, NC. ;North Carolina Univ. at Chapel Hill. ;Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA. ;American Health Foundation, Inc., Valhalla, NY. Naylor Dana Inst. for Disease Prevention. |
Abstract |
The establishment of a quantitative personal marker of side-stream smoke exposure in children is important in the study of potential health effects in the group. Cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine, has been shown to exhibit a dose-response relationship to side-stream smoke exposure in adults, and has been used to quantitate prior exposure. The study was undertaken to determine the dose of nicotine, the peak level of urinary cotinine, the time to peak cotinine levels, and the elimination half-life of cotinine in young children exposed to a controlled amount of side-stream smoke. With an exposure to 26.4 ug/cu m of nicotine, nine children averaging 2.03 years old had peak cotinine/creatinine levels of 818 ng/mg. The time to peak cotinine was 4.1 hours, with an elimination half-life of 3.6 hours. |