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What is passive smoking? Non-smokers cannot avoid inhaling smoke when sharing the same room as smokers. This is 'passive smoking'.
The smoke is mainly 'side stream' smoke from the burning tip of cigarettes, cigars, or pipe tobacco. Smokers also exhale some 'mainstream' smoke. Both mainstream and side stream smoke contain globules of tar together with nicotine and a wide range of vapours and gases such as carbon monoxide, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, and acrolein. Some of these substances have been shown in laboratory tests to induce cancer in animals.
What are the risks of passive smoking?
It has been shown that smoking is the single most important cause of disease and premature death. Many independent scientific bodies worldwide have also shown that passive smoking can cause lung cancer in non-smokers. In 1988, an advisory body to the UK Government, the Independent Scientific Committee on Smoking and Health, reviewed all the available scientific evidence and concluded that it was consistent with passive smoking causing a small increase in the risk of lung cancer. The Committee estimated that passive smoking might be causing several hundred-lung cancer deaths a year in the United Kingdom.
What is the legal situation? Under section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, employers have to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all their employees. This means that if a risk to health can be demonstrated, for example if a worker with a respiratory condition is forced to work in a smoky atmosphere which may make that condition worse, the employer must take action to deal with this risk. Health and safety inspectors can take enforcement action if necessary in these circumstances, but ultimately it would be for the courts to decide, whether a risk to health was significant.
Employers also have a common law responsibility to provide a safe place and system of work. They need to resolve complaints from employees in order to ensure that their health is not at risk from a smoky environment.
Good ventilation will reduce the effects of tobacco smoke, but will not completely prevent exposure. In buildings with mechanical ventilation, employers should consider discharging air from smoking areas separately rather than allowing it to enter the recirculating system. If this is not reasonably practicable, the recirculated air should be brought up to an appropriate standard by suitable decontamination systems. Tobacco smoke building up in the workplace is a sure sign that the ventilation system is inadequate.
The main question people, that is non smokers should be asking which has been mentioned already in many quarters and has raised the temperature of the debate, is why should these people continue to be paid benefits from taxes when the disability is self inflicted. Smokers will argue that it is addictive and they cannot give up, it may be, however some people and I know of one in particular, have given up when a smoking related disease has been diagnosed and I?m sure there are many more but for the ones who don?t even try why then should we as tax payers continue to pay for their medical expenses and other benefits.
Money saved on not paying out benefits to people with smoking related diseases who do not following treatment, could then be redirected into the social security budgets for payment to the unemployed and the genuine disabled. And I?m sure that most politicians would agree that these are the people who need financial help. Or as Mr Milburn has stated cancer treatment is going to the top of the list for treatment, why when most people chose to smoke. Why do the rest of us have to pay
According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 419,000 people die in the United States from tobacco use every year. Teenagers make up the largest percentage of new cigarette smokers and studies show that tobacco is one of the most common "gateway drugs" there is. Obviously, the problem of tobacco use among today?s youth must be addressed.
For many years the debate over whether or not cigarettes cause cancer has angered many people, and been unresolved. Meanwhile, smokers continue to drop like flies, and increasingly it's becoming clear that children are also being made ill and placed at risk for cancer and neurological disease. The point is that both the cigarette industry and the scientific community have known for at least three generations that these chemical contaminants are in cigarettes and that they are carcinogenic and potential killers. Both the UK and U.S. governments have placed a warning on all cigarette packages. The various national health organizations have concluded that cigarette smoking is indeed dangerous and have expended many millions in research into the mechanisms behind cancer, heart disease, neurological damage, etc. Millions of people have stopped smoking cigarettes, and millions more have switched to "Low Tar & Nicotine" brands in the mistaken notion that these were less dangerous. Despite these warnings people still persist in killing themselves and others by smoking.
Dr Allan Britton
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