Re: Study: Air worse in smoky bars than on truck-choked roads
From: Michele (healthyu_at_concentric.net)
Date: 09/22/04
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Date: 22 Sep 2004 15:33:47 -0700
rbystrianyk@gmail.com (Roman Bystrianyk) wrote in message news:<4f28e591.0409201507.51784028@posting.google.com>...
> http://www.healthsentinel.com/news.php?event=news_print_list_item&id=258
>
> "Study: Air worse in smoky bars than on truck-choked roads", USA
> Today, September 20, 2004,
> Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-09-20-smoke_x.htm
>
> Which is more harmful to your health ? a smoky bar or a city street
> filled with diesel truck fumes? Well, you might want to skip your next
> happy hour.
>
> Smoky bars and casinos have up to 50 times more cancer-causing
> particles in the air than highways and city streets clogged with
> diesel trucks at rush hour, according to a study that also shows
> indoor air pollution virtually disappears once smoking is banned.
>
> Conducted by the researcher who first showed secondhand smoke causes
> thousands of U.S. lung cancer deaths each year, the study found casino
> and bar workers are exposed to particulate pollution at far greater
> levels than the government allows outdoors.
>
> "This paper will help localities pass smoking bans," predicted the
> author, James Repace, a biophysicist who works as a secondhand-smoke
> consultant after spending 30 years as a federal researcher. "It shows
> how beneficial smoking bans are for hospitality workers and patrons."
>
> Repace tested air in a casino, a pool hall and six taverns in Delaware
> in November 2002 and in January 2003, two months after the state
> imposed a strict indoor smoking ban.
>
> His detectors measured two substances blamed for tobacco-related
> cancers: a group of chemicals called particulate polycyclic aromatic
> hydrocarbons, or PPAHs, and respirable particles ? airborne soot small
> enough to penetrate the lungs.
>
> "They are the most dangerous" substances in secondhand smoke, said
> Repace, a visiting assistant clinical professor at Tufts University
> School of Medicine in Boston.
>
> Repace said his research also showed that ventilation systems ?
> sometimes touted by tavern, restaurant and casino groups as an
> alternative to smoking bans ? cannot exchange air fast enough to keep
> up with the smoke.
>
> The study, published in the September issue of the Journal of
> Occupational and Environmental Medicine, was partly funded by the
> nation's largest philanthropic organization devoted to health care,
> the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation of Plainsboro, N.J.
>
> Repace found an average level of respirable particles of 231
> micrograms, or millionths of a gram, per cubic meter of air in the
> eight nightspots in Delaware. That is 15 times the 15-microgram
> Environmental Protection Agency limit for outdoor air, and 49 times
> the rush-hour average on Interstate 95 in Wilmington. It even tops the
> 199-microgram rush-hour level at the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel
> tollbooths.
>
> The eight indoor places had an average PPAH level of 134 nanograms, or
> billionths of a gram, per cubic meter ? five times the level in the
> air outside. By comparison, the average rush-hour levels of PPAHs on
> Interstate 95 in Wilmington and in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood,
> heavily polluted by diesel and truck emissions, were 7 and 18
> nanograms, respectively.
>
> After the smoking ban took effect, levels of both cancer-causing
> substances dropped 90% or more in all of the indoor places tested,
> with the air quality nearly indistinguishable from outside air.
>
> "It demonstrates really clearly that a smoking ban results in a
> massive improvement in air quality," said Dr. Jonathan Foulds,
> director of the tobacco dependence program at University of Medicine
> and Dentistry of New Jersey's School of Public Health. "Here in New
> Jersey, and in many other states that don't have an indoor smoking
> ban, this should be used to put pressure on the legislators."
>
> Timothy Buckley, associate professor of environmental health science
> at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said
> other research has shown dramatic air quality improvement after
> smoking was banned in workplaces, but this appears to be the first
> study in bars or casinos.
>
> "The magnitude of that effect is striking," Buckley said.
>
> As of July 1, a total of 727 U.S. municipalities had some smoking
> restrictions, with 312 banning smoking even in bars and restaurants,
> according to the nonprofit American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation.
>
> Delaware, New York and Massachusetts prohibit smoking in all
> workplaces, restaurants and bars. California and Connecticut have
> similar bans, but with exemptions for workplaces with five or fewer
> employees.
Delaware's ban on smoking in the places mentioned has worked out well.
Some establishments erected "smoking pavilions" outside (with seats,
heat/air conditioning, etc.) -- one nearby actually bought an old
DelDOT bus & parked it in the lot for smokers to grab a quick one -- &
some just toughed it out. Most of the smokers seemed to understand
the need for legislation when common courtesy couldn't cut it.
Now it's weird to dine out in another state & hear "Smoking or non?"
- Next message: John: "Re: Why was cancer Rare 100 years Ago ? We are What We eat"
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