Mechanical stress to alveolar walls may cause progressive damage after an early-life insult such as exposure to environmental tobacco
smoke (ETS). This hypothesis was examined by using data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of
Atherosclerosis (MESA), a population-based cohort aged 45-84 years, free of clinical
cardiovascular disease, recruited from 6 US sites in 2000-2002. The MESA-Lung Study assessed a fractal, structural measure of early
emphysema ("alpha," lower values indicate more
emphysema) and a standard quantitative measure ("percent
emphysema") from cardiac computed tomography scans. Childhood ETS exposure was assessed retrospectively as a report of living with one or more regular indoor smokers. Analyses included 1,781 nonsmokers (<100 cigarettes, 20 cigars, or 20 pipefulls in their lifetime and urinary
cotinine levels <100 ng/mL); mean age was 61 years (standard deviation, 10), and 65% were women. Childhood ETS exposure from 2 or more smokers (17%) compared with none (52%) was associated with 0.05 lower alpha and 2.8 higher percent
emphysema (P for trend = 0.04 and 0.01, respectively) after adjustment for demographic, anthropometric, parental, and participant characteristics, as well as adult exposures (e.g., cumulative residential air pollution exposure, exposure to ETS as an adult). Childhood ETS exposure was associated with detectable differences on computed tomography scans of adult lungs of nonsmokers.