NEW YORK - A 10-year study conducted by Harvard University researchers shows that passive smoke doubles a person's risk of heart disease, the New York Times reported yesterday. It said the study tracked more than 32,000 healthy women who never smoked but who were regularly exposed to other people's smoke.
The women in the study, who ranged in age from 36 to 61 when the study began, suffered 152 heart attacks, 25 of them fatal. Those results mean that "there may be up to 50,000 Americans dying of heart attacks from passive smoke each year," said Dr Ichiro Kawachi, the lead author of the study.