Not actually supported by the detailed text in the article.
What they presumably meant to say is that prolonged exposure results in increased risk due to an increased dose. Dose = exposure x time.
Given the astonishing scientific and statistical irregularities in the original EPA studies of second-hand smoke, I find the results of this study really, really unlikely.
For the results of the EPA 2nd-hand smoke study to be accurate, second-hand smoke would have to be much more toxic than 1st-hand smoke. Which doesn't seem probable.
These studies invariably give the impression that there's something uniquely hazardous about smoke from the tobacco plant. This is of course untrue, since the carcinogenic components (tars) of tobacco smoke are similar to smoke from wood or other plants.
The only reason cigarettes are so hazardous is that we don't normally intentionally deeply inhale the smoke of other plants in such quantity. Nicotine, the drug that induces people to smoke in such quantity, is actually pretty innocuous and even beneficial in the doses a smoker is exposed to. Although it is incredibly toxic at higher doses.
Second hand smoke is partially purified by the lungs of the smoker. Lots of the ucky stuff is removed by the time it is exhaled.
It is not even logically possible for 2nd had smoke to be as bad as first hand. By the time the reside settles on any surface, it is considerably different that when it was coming out of the cigarette.
This “study” is simply making it painfully clear that nothing is beyond being turned into a hazard by the loony left in their desire to control us.
Truly it is a mental illness to go to these extremes as they do. Creepy sick.