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Context: Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke is a health risk that is of concern to patrons and of particular concern to employees of restaurants and bars., Objective: To assess environmental tobacco smoke exposure (using expired carbon monoxide levels) in non-smoking waiters before and after a normal day's shift and to compare pre-exposure levels with non-smoking medical students., Design: An observational study., Setting: Restaurants with more than 50 tables or 100 places in São Paulo., Subjects: 100 non-smoking restaurant waiters and 100 non-smoking medical students in São Paulo, Brazil., Main Measurements: Levels of expired carbon monoxide, measured with a Smokerlyser (Bedfont EC 50 Scientific), before and after a normal day's work., Results: Waiters' pre-exposure expired carbon monoxide levels were similar to those of medical students, but after a mean of 9 hours exposure in the workplace, median levels more than doubled (2.0 ppm vs. 5.0 ppm, P <0.001). Post-exposure carbon monoxide levels were correlated with the number of tables available for smokers (Kendall's tau = 0.2, P <0.0001)., Conclusions: Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke is the most likely explanation for the increase in carbon monoxide levels among these non-smoking waiters. These findings can be used to inform the ongoing public health debate on passive smoking.

Objective: To investigate the psychometric properties of three scales commonly used to measure attitudes and beliefs about alcoholism., Design: Cross-sectional study using a systematic sample., Setting: Hospital São Paulo (a public general tertiary hospital) and the adjoining Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil., Participants: 310 nurses and nursing teachers., Instruments: The Marcus Alcoholism Questionnaire, The Seaman Mannello Nurses' Attitudes Towards Alcohol and Alcoholism Scale and The Tolor-Tamarin Attitudes Towards Alcoholism Scale, which were combined into one self-administered questionnaire., Analysis: The scales were re-grouped into their original formats and each underwent a principal components analysis with orthogonal rotation of factors., Results: Each scale was found to consist of three main factors. There was some degree of overlap in the nature of the factors that the scales measured but each scale also measured something unique., Conclusion: The results of this comparative analysis could be used as a basis for developing a new scale covering all the important attitudinal groups identified by this study.