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Passive smoking and how it relates to cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a widely debated topic. Many studies that discuss this topic address the specific issue of how passive smoking affects the development of CVD among the non-smoking relatives of smokers. The researchers who have studied the relationship of passive smoking and the risk of CVD in the non-smoking relatives of smokers, mostly differ in their interpretation of the results. As will be discussed in the following, there is strong evidence to suggest a correlation between passive smoking and the development of CVD in the non-smoking relatives of smokers. However, the exact statistics of this correlation differ from study to study. Some studies suggest a substantial correlation and propose that passive smoking is a likely causal factor of CVD in the non-smoking relatives of smokers (He, Lam, Li, Li, Du, Jia, Huang & Zheng, 1994). Other studies find that there is a minimal correlation and that there is no statistical significance to the hypothesis that passive smoking leads to increased risk of CVD in the non-smoking relatives of smokers (Iso, Shimamoto, Sato, Koike, Iida & Komachi, 1996). It has been suggested that increased risk of CVD due to passive smoking is the