Each year, approximately 340,000 new cases of pancreatic cancer (PC) are diagnosed worldwide. Literature shows that cigarette smoking is a major risk factor of PC, accounting for about 25% of PCs. It is possible that environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) may also increase the risk of PC,but the results in the current literature are inconsistent. We analyzed the data from an interview survey of 125 non-smoking PC patients and 404 non-smoking controls to examine the association between exposure to ETS and risk of PC among never smokers. Among these study subjects, 22%of the controls and 24% of the cases were ever exposed to ETS at home or at work. When we compared the PC risk associated with exposure to ETS between cases and controls, we did not observe an association between exposure to ETS and PC (exposure to ETS at home vs. no exposure: odds ratio (OR) = 1.09, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.5-2.3; exposure to ETS at workplace vs. no exposure: OR = 1.2, 95% CI: 0.6-2.2; exposure to ETS athome or workplace vs. no exposure: OR = 0.7, 95% CI: 0.2-2.2). Overall, our results did not support an association between ETS and an increased PCrisk.
