Role of parental smoking and environmental tobacco smoke exposure in childhood cancer: A study using hair cotinine analysis and questionnaires

Objectives In the etiology of childhood cancers, many genetic and environmental factors play a role. One of these factors could be cigarette smoking, and the main source of tobacco smoke exposure of children is parental smoking. However, establishing a causal relationship between parental smoking and childhood cancers has proven challenging due to difficulties in accurately detecting tobacco smoke exposure Methods To address this issue, we used hair cotinine analysis and a questionnaire to get information about tobacco smoke exposures of pediatric cancer patients and healthy children. A total of 104 pediatric cancer patients and 99 healthy children participated in our study. Parental smoking behaviors (pre‐conceptional, during pregnancy, and current smoking) and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposures of children are compared. Results We have found no differences between two groups by means of maternal smoking behaviors. However, the rates of paternal pre‐conceptional smoking and smoking during pregnancy were significantly low in cancer patients (p