Workshop summary: assessing exposure to environmental tobacco smoke in the workplace

Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is a term now widely used to refer to the mixture of sidestream smoke and exhaled mainstream smoke that pollutes air in locations where tobacco smoking is taking place. A multidisciplinary workshop was convened to address key issues related to ETS exposure in the workplace in order to prepare the groundwork for a risk assessment of the hazard ETS poses to workers. Workshop participants concluded that substantial evidence was now available on worker exposure to ETS using both direct and indirect approaches to exposure assessment and that these data could be used to project distribution of exposures to ETS in the nation's workplaces. This summary of the discussions at the workshop is an overview of the suggested approach to exposure assessment.