Smoke and Policy

Institute for Global Tobacco Control

“You can’t control what you can’t measure,” says environmental health specialist Patrick Breysse. If you want to control tobacco, you first need to be able to quantify how much nicotine is in the air. Breysse teamed up with physician-epidemiologist Ana Navas-Acien, who used air monitors to determine concentrations of nicotine in the air in bars, restaurants and other public places in Latin America.

The research, published in JAMA, concluded that airborne nicotine was found in 94 percent of the 600 air monitors in the survey. The study encouraged Uruguay to become the first country in Latin America to declare its public places smoke-free in 2006. (The data also helped Panama and Guatemala to enact smoke-free policies.) Navas-Acien has launched a similar study of airborne nicotine levels in 30 countries worldwide.

Turning such discoveries into lifesaving policies is the central mission of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control (IGTC). Its efforts are time-sensitive: Tobacco is expected to lead to more than 1 billion deaths this century. IGTC trains tobacco control leaders worldwide and develops evidence-based surveillance and monitoring tools to evaluate global progress.

With support from the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, IGTC is spearheading capacity-building activities in several priority countries and has research ongoing in 40 countries.