Perceived Health Concerns of Child Hand Nicotine Levels Among Parental Smokers of Young Children

Handwipe nicotine (HN) levels can serve as biomarkers of children's exposure to thirdhand smoke (THS) and may be an innovative smoking cessation tool. The objective was to assess health concerns of parental smokers and their readiness to quit after being given hypothetically high and low child HN levels.

Participants were parental smokers/vapers (N = 89) who lived with their 0- to 11-year-old children and who were participating in a THS observational trial. Parents were presented with hypothetical child HN levels: high result of more than 200 ng/wipe and low result of less than 10 ng/wipe. After being presented with each result, parents reported their readiness to quit smoking (range = 0-10) and general concern about the results, concern that smoking would affect their child's health, and perception of how often their child would get sick (ranges = 0-3). t tests were performed to compare sample means.

Parents had higher readiness to quit (mean = 7.0, SD = 3.1, P = .003) and higher general concern (mean = 2.3, SD = 0.9, P < .001) when presented with the high result compared with the low result (mean = 6.4, SD = 3.1; and mean = 2.0, SD = 1.0, respectively). Parents had higher concern that smoking would affect their child's health (mean = 2.4, SD = 0.9, P < .001) and how often their child would get sick (mean = 2.0, SD = 1.1, P = .006) when presented with the high result compared with the low result (mean = 2.0, SD = 1.0; and mean = 1.8, SD = 1.1, respectively).

Higher hypothetical child HN levels influenced parents' concerns about their child's health and chances of getting sick. Future tobacco cessation interventions should consider providing parents with their child's actual HN levels to potentially increase their readiness to quit.