Adult smoking as a proxy for environmental tobacco smoke exposure among children - comparing the impact of the level of information in Estonia, Finland and Latvia.

Objective: International comparability of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure levels is difficult. This study assesses whether estimating children's exposure from information on adult smoking and exposure to ETS makes international comparisons more reliable.

Methods: The exposure among children was estimated using three different combinations (models) based on different sets of information on adult smoking, household composition or adult exposure to ETS at home in three cross-sectional nationally representative samples drawn from data sets from Estonia (n=2650), Finland (n=2829) and Latvia (n=5440) in the years 2002 and 2004.