The ban on smoking in public places in Scotland is already beginning to have an impact on the nation’s health, a conference in Edinburgh heard yesterday.

The number of nonsmokers admitted to hospital after heart attacks fell by 20 per cent in the ten months after the ban came into force in March 2006, compared with the same ten months in the year before, Jill Pell, of Glasgow University, said.

Other studies have shown that children’s exposure to secondhand smoke has fallen, except among children whose mothers smoke, or those with two parents who smoke.

Professor Pell’s study covered nine hospitals, which between them account for two thirds of all hospital admissions for heart attacks in Scotland. In the ten months of the year leading up to the ban, there were 3,235 admissions, while in the matching period after the ban, the figure was 2,684.

Patients were asked if they were smokers or nonsmokers, and their answers double-checked through blood tests to detect levels of cotinine, the product into which nicotine is converted by the body. In nonsmokers, the fall in heart attack admissions was higher, at 20 per cent.

Professor Pell said that the reduction among nonsmokers was biologically plausible, because smoke contained a lot of toxins that could trigger heart attacks in people with coronary heart disease. “The difference between our study and earlier ones is that we have been able to show an effect in people who have never smoked. That can only be due to lower levels of passive smoke,” she said.

Rates of heart disease are falling everywhere, but not as fast as this. Over the same period of ten months after the ban, admissions in England fell by 4 per cent, and the reduction rate in Scotland over the decade before the ban was 3 per cent per year.

Sally Haw, principal public health adviser to NHS Scotland, who collaborated in the study, said she was confident that the figures were reliable.

“It’s a large study, we have confirmed people’s smoking status, and we have used a robust definition to count admissions” she said.

Sir Richard Peto, of Oxford University, an expert in the epidemiology of smoking, said many things could affect admissions for heart attacks, including the weather. Fewer people suffer heart attacks when the weather is mild. “I’d be surprised if this drop were due solely to the smoking ban,” he said. “I would like to see cigarette sales figures, to see if there has been any fall.”

Jon Ayres, head of the University of Aberdeen environmental and occupational medicine department, said: “It’s very difficult to believe there is anything fundamentally wrong with the results. I think the 20 per cent figure is good. If you look at the figures month to month, the effect seems to creep up since last year. This also suggests that the important thing was the smoking ban.”

The study has yet to be published, but the conference coincided with the publication online by the British Medical Journal of three other studies. One found a reduction of 39 per cent in exposure to secondhand smoke in 11-year-olds and a similar decrease among adult nonsmokers.

Cotinine levels in blood were used to measure exposure, and showed that most children have benefited. But in those with two parents who smoke, or with a mother who is a smoker, the drop was not statistically significant.

A study by Aberdeen University of nearly 400 staff at 72 pubs in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh also found health improvements in bar staff. The two-day conference at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre has attracted an international audience of health experts and policymakers.

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