In this issue of Thorax a further paper from Dundee is published which explores a group of 438 children aged 2–12 years with asthma. In their first paper1 the authors investigated passive smoke exposure, as measured by salivary cotinine levels, and found that exposure to tobacco smoke was highest where housing conditions were crowded and where several heavy smokers smoked in the same room as the child. In a second paper2the authors reported that the intervention of asking the parents to reduce the exposure of their asthmatic children to tobacco smoke was ineffective.

The latest paper by Crombie et al 3 on page 9 investigates how often the 438 asthmatic children were taken to their family practitioners (GPs), either for asthma or …