[Behaviour concerning smoking among people from the closest environment of students who begin their studies at the Health Science Department].

It can be seen from many researches that popularity of smoking among the students is still high. Due to that fact, there is a necessity to search for factor that would influence the behavior and attitude to smoking among female and male students as early as their first year at university, and also include this in preventive programmes. The aim of the work is to present the behavior concerning smoking among people from the closest environment of students who begin their studies at the Health Science Department and determine their influence on behavior and attitudes of the tested towards smoking. The subject matter of the analysis are selected fragments of research carried out between the years 2007/2008 and 2008/ 2009 among students who began their studies at The Health Science Department at the Medical University of Łódź. For collecting the empirical material, auditorial questionnaires were used. In every academic year that was studied, over 470 people took part in the test, which is over 93% of students who are on dean's lists. Among the people smoking in the closest environment, respondents pointed to their friends most frequently: in 2007/2008 it was 49.1% of the surveyed (235 people) and in 2008/2009 57.1% (270 people). The second place belonged to "one smoking parent". In 2007/2008, 31.7% of the tested students (152 people) lived with one parent inhaling tobacco smoke before beginning their studies at university and the year after that, 30.2% (143 people). In 2007/2008, 16.1% of the tested (77 people) claimed that no-one smoked in their closest environment and a year later, the same answer was given by 15.2% of the tested (72 people). Among the surveyed on the first years of studies, the ratio of smoking students in whose closest environment there was no-one smoking, was different significantly to the ratio of smoking students who had people inhaling tobacco smoke in their environment.