Smoking among Macedonian Workers

🔖 In order to evaluate smoking status in Macedonian workers’ population, we performed a cross sectional, questionnaire-based study including 753 randomly selected workers. The prevalence of current smokers among all workers was 35.4%, ranging from 30.2% in office workers to 43.5% in construction workers. It did not significantly differ from the prevalence recorded in 2005 (36.8%). The prevalence of ex-smokers among all workers was 10.5%, ranging from 8.4% in construction workers to 12.1% in office workers, and showing minor increase with respect to 2005. The prevalence of passive smokers among all workers was 29.1%, ranging from 26.2% in food processing workers to 32.9% in agricultural workers, remaining similar to their prevalence established in the 2005 study. Our findings indicated high prevalence of current and passive smokers, as well as low prevalence of ex-smokers among examined workers. There were minor changes in their prevalence with respect to the findings from the 2005 study. The results obtained also indicated a need of stricter implementation of anti-smoking activities which will be targeted to all workers.