Can smoke-free policies help lower blood pressure among non-smokers?

According to new research, smoke-free policies have now been associated with low blood pressure among non-smokers. Since smoke-free policies prohibit smoking in public areas and bars, lesser people have been hospitalised for heart diseases and health problems related to smoking. "We found that nonsmoking adults in the study who lived in areas with smoke-free laws in restaurants, bars or workplaces had lower systolic blood pressure by the end of the follow-up period compared to those who lived in areas without smoke-free laws," said Stephanie Mayne, Ph.D., study lead author.



"Smoke-free laws were associated with reduced systolic blood pressure, but surprisingly not with reductions in diastolic blood pressure or high blood pressure. It's not entirely certain why this was the case, but it's possible that we are detecting effects on systolic blood pressure that are below the threshold for hypertension," Mayne said.



"Also, when we looked at differences in blood pressure over time within individuals, comparing years when they lived in an area with a smoke-free law to years when they didn't, systolic blood pressure was lower on average when they lived in an area with smoke-free laws, after accounting for overall trends in blood pressure and for how people's levels of risk factors like diet and physical activity changed over the study period," Mayne said.