Evaluation of the concentration and time of exposure to the cigarette smoke particles in a car by different ventilation conditions

People commonly spend, on average, 5-6% of their time in a day in enclosed vehicles. Smoking in vehicles with little volume can result in potential harmful effects on children and other passengers. This study aimed to evaluate the concentrations of suspended particles produced from smoking and the exposer time of passengers to the produced smoke.
This cross–sectional study was performed in Tehran, 2014. The exposure to cigarette smoke was measured using Grimm11-A device that had 16 entrances with different sizes from 0.3 to 20 µm. The studied vehicle was Pejo 405 , andwindows condition were as following: 1 back window open, 2 back windows open, 1 front window open, 2 front windows open, 2 front and 1 back windows open, 4 windows open and 4 windows close. SPSS 16 software was used to make statistical analysis ( one-way ANOVA (p Numerical concentrations of particles in small size row (PM2.5) were several LOGs higher than larger sizes row. In addition, it was observed that exposure time to particles in small size row had significant difference with large size row. The maximum exposure concentrations with a p-value According to the gained results, the largest portion of cigarette smoke particles in vehicles belonged to the PM2.5. Different conditions of windows in their opened and closed states can be effective on ventilation. So that the more numbers of windows are opened the greater ventilation will occure. Generally, because of the limit space of vehicles and high exposure concentrations, the enactment of cigarette smoking prohibition legislation seems to be necessary.