If you would like to volunteer, please send an inquiry with journalistic credentials to Elliot Essman.

There is no scientific controversy about the health risks of secondhand smoke. Only the tobacco industry disagrees with the conclusive evidence:1

• Secondhand smoke kills at least 1,000 Marylanders each year.2

• About 60% of Marylanders favor a complete ban on smoking in indoor work areas.3

• Over 80% of Marylanders do not smoke. Yet many work places are a major source of exposure to secondhand smoke.4

• rooms can have up to six6 times the air pollution of a busy highway. 5

• The concentration levels of secondhand smoke are 1.6 to 2.0 times higher in restaurants than in office work places.6

• The concentration levels of secondhand smoke are 3.0 to 6.1 times higher in bars than in office work places.6

• There is an excess and unacceptable lung cancer risk of approximately 50% among food service workers compared to the general population.6

• Smoke-free ordinances do not lower restaurant sales. Thus, it appears that most smokers light up in restaurants because they are allowed.7

• Secondhand smoke does not quickly clear from a room. It takes about 2 weeks for nicotine to clear from an enclosed room.8

• Nicotine is not the only chemical in secondhand smoke. Smoke from the burning end of a cigarette contains over 4,000 chemicals and 40 cancer-causing substances.9

• Smoking causes a great deal of discomfort in the work place. Over 59% of nonsmoking employees report suffering discomfort from secondhand smoke in work places that permit smoking. Even 15% of smoking employees report some degree of discomfort from secondhand smoke. (10)

• Smoking in the work place damages property and increases cleaning costs. These costs get passed on to customers. A survey of 2,000 smoke free work places found that 60% reported a reduction in maintenance and cleaning costs.11

• Smoking in the work place increases an employer's liability. nonsmoking employees have won worker's compensation and disability payments because their employers failed to provide a safe, smoke free environment.12

• Pregnant women in the work force need protection from secondhand smoke. Maternal exposure to secondhand smoke for one hour or more per day was associated with spontaneous abortion, even after adjusting for other factors.13

• Babies born to pregnant women exposed to secondhand smoke have significantly reduced infant birth weights.14

• Smoke free policies are already very acceptable to most customers. For example, 80% of Hertz Corporation's fleet of rental cars are smoke free.15

  References:

  1. US Environmental Protection Agency. Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other Disorders. US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Office of Air and Radiation. EPA/600/6-90/006F, 1992.
  2. DHMH, Local and Family Health Administration, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Program Development (OPEPD), 1995.
  3. Shopland DR, Hartman AM, Repace JL et al. Smoking Behavior, Workplace Policies, and Public Opinion Regarding Smoking Restrictions in Maryland. Maryland Medical Journal February 1995; 44(2):99-104.
  4. Maryland Register, Volume 21, Issue 15. Friday, July 22, 1994, pg 1345.
  5. Centers for Disease Control, It's Time to Stop Being a Passive Victim, 1993.
  6. Siegel, M. Involuntary Smoking in the Restaurant Workplace: A Review of Employee Exposure and Health Effects. JAMA 1993; 270:490-93.
  7. Glantz SA, Smith LRA. The Effect of Ordinances Requiring Smoke-Free Restaurants on Restaurant Sales. American Journal of Public Health 1994; 84(7):1081-1085.
  8. Repace/Lowrey, Environmental Journal, 1986:11:3-22.
  9. Environmental Protection Agency, Indoor Air Facts: Environmental Tobacco Smoke, 1989.
  10. Centers for Disease Control, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, May 22, 1992.
  11. Swart. An Overlooked Cost of Employee Smoking. Personnel, August 1990.
  12. Americans for Nonsmokers' Right, Smoking and Business, June 1994.
  13. Windham GC, et al. Parental Cigarette Smoking and the Risk of Spontaneous Abortion. American Journal of Epidemiology 1992; 135:1394-1403.
  14 Martinez FD, et al. The Effect of Paternal Smoking on the Birthweight of Newborns Whose Mothers Did Not Smoke. American Journal of Public Health 1994; 84:1489-91.
  15. Wall Street Journal, 2/8/94, p. B1.

  JUNE 1995
  

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  Caveat: Smoking And Open Office Plans

  by Patricia McBroom

  Tobacco smoke in the workplace is creating a health risk for non-smokers that is as great or greater than the hazard of living with a smoker at home, according to an unusually large study of many different work environments.

  Particularly in open offices that allowed smoking, ambient nicotine levels averaged more than twice as high as in homes with a smoker present, found S. Katharine Hammond, associate professor of public health, and colleagues in the study published Sept. 26 by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

  By comparison, levels in shop or factory environments that allowed smoking were roughly comparable to those found in studies of home exposure, Hammond discovered.

  Such high levels of environmental smoke mean that non-smokers are being exposed to a significant health risk at work if their employers allow smoking on the job, said Hammond.

  In work environments as a whole, that risk is about one death per thousand individuals, a level at which safety and health administrators often consider taking action, she said.

  Hammond also found that smoking policies that restrict or ban on-site smoking work very well, reducing the average pollution exposures by 80 to 95 percent depending on the degree of restriction.

  "It would be wise to have policies that restrict smoking to enclosed, separately ventilated areas or ban it entirely in the workplace. There is no need to expose people to this hazard," she said.

  Hammond's study is one of the largest ever done of occupational exposure to cigarette smoke. Some 25 worksites in Massachusetts were tested, including firehouses, textile industries, manufacturing plants of various kinds, newspapers and offices.

  The sample came from an on-going cancer prevention study called the WellWorks project funded by the National Cancer Institute and carried out while Hammond was with the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester. An earlier study by Hammond, published by JAMA in 1989, helped bring about smoking restrictions on airlines.

  In this study, researchers took measures of average weekly concentrations of nicotine levels with monitors placed on the site. They discovered that, depending on the smoking policy in effect and the kind of work environment, nicotine levels covered a very wide range.

  "ETS (environmental tobacco smoke) does not build up as much in workspaces that are large, with high ceilings and good ventilation," the article said.

  Smoking policy had dramatic effects on exposure levels. Offices that allowed smoking showed average nicotine concentrations of 8.6 micrograms per cubic meter, compared to 1.3 micrograms in sites that restricted smoking and .3 micrograms in sites that banned it. Average concentrations in shop environments that allowed smoking were 2.3 micrograms per cubic meter, falling to .7 micrograms and .2 micrograms in the restrictive and banned conditions.

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