In this study, we estimated the disease burdens attributable to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure in Korean adults in 2010 and analyzed the trend of that from 2005 to 2010. We obtained information on the study population from the 2010 Cause of Death Statistic and estimated the ETS-attributable fraction using data from the Korean Community Health Survey and the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The numbers of ETS-attributable deaths in female and male non-smokers were estimated to be 4.1 and 69.6% of the numbers of deaths attributable to current smoke, respectively. The deaths attributable to ETS were larger in female than in male non-smokers (710 vs. 420). The ETS-attributable deaths increased slightly in 2005-2008 but decreased in 2009-2010. The number of potential years of life lost from ETS was 9077.24 years in 2010. If there were no exposure to ETS in adult non-smokers, we would expect to see 1130 fewer deaths (9.9% of the deaths from current smoke). The results suggest that ETS poses considerable disease burdens for non-smokers, especially women, in Korea.
Keywords: environmental tobacco smoke pollution; illness burden; passive smoking; secondhand smoking; years of potential life lost.