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Secondhand Smoke Questions |
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Restaurant, Bar, Night Club and Tavern owners.
Stop and ask yourself....
How Much Money is walking
out your door early each and every night because
your place is TOO SMOKEY?
Smoke is made up of two main categories
of pollutants:
| |
Smoke Particles - the visible clouds of
smoke you can see.
Invisible Gases and Odors. (consisting of
gases and fumes too small to be filtered
out of the air) |
If you just remove the smoke particles with an
Electrostatic Smoke Eater or filter based Smoke
Eater, you have only solved half the problem.
Your place will still smell like smoke and you
will still be breathing the harmful gases.
You don't need some fancy, high maintenance, expensive
electrostatic precipitator with some brand name
on it. Use our high quality PurAir Filters on
a Pur Air™ system. The correct number of
fans in a room will provide enough airflow and
filtration to remove the airborne smoke particles.
We offer four filter types one will best meet
your air purification needs.
Health issues
EPA Study
In 1992, EPA completed a major assessment of the
respiratory health risks of ETS (Respiratory Health
Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other
Disorders EPA/600/6-90/006F). The report concludes
that exposure to ETS is responsible for approximately
3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking
adults and impairs the respiratory health of hundreds
of thousands of children.
Infants and young children whose parents smoke
in their presence are at increased risk of lower
respiratory tract infections (pneumonia and bronchitis)
and are more likely to have symptoms of respiratory
irritation like cough, excess phlegm, and wheeze.
EPA estimates that passive smoking annually causes
between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory
tract infections in infants and children under
18 months of age, resulting in between 7,500 and
15,000 hospitalizations each year. These children
may also have a build-up of fluid in the middle
ear, which can lead to ear infections. Older children
who have been exposed to secondhand smoke may
have slightly reduced lung function.
Asthmatic children are especially at risk. EPA
estimates that exposure to secondhand smoke increases
the number of episodes and severity of symptoms
in hundreds of thousands of asthmatic children,
and may cause thousands of non-asthmatic children
to develop the disease each year. EPA estimates
that between 200,000 and 1,000,000 asthmatic children
have their condition made worse by exposure to
secondhand smoke each year. Exposure to secondhand
smoke causes eye, nose, and throat irritation.
It may affect the cardiovascular system and some
studies have linked exposure to secondhand smoke
with the onset of chest pain. For publications
about ETS, go to Smoke Free Homes web site, the
IAQ Publications page, or contact EPA's Indoor
Air Quality Information Clearinghouse (IAQ INFO),
800-438-4318 or (703) 356-4020.
Don't smoke at home or permit others to
do so. Ask smokers to smoke outdoors.
The 1986 Surgeon General's report concluded that
physical separation of smokers and nonsmokers
in a common air space, such as different rooms
within the same house, may reduce - but will not
eliminate - non-smokers' exposure to environmental
tobacco smoke.
If smoking indoors cannot be avoided,
increase ventilation in the area where smoking
takes place.
Open windows or use exhaust fans. Ventilation,
a common method of reducing exposure to indoor
air pollutants, also will reduce but not eliminate
exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. Because
smoking produces such large amounts of pollutants,
natural or mechanical ventilation techniques do
not remove them from the air in your home as quickly
as they build up. In addition, the large increases
in ventilation it takes to significantly reduce
exposure to environmental tobacco smoke can also
increase energy costs substantially. Consequently,
the most effective way to reduce exposure to environmental
tobacco smoke in the home is to eliminate smoking
there.
Do not smoke if children are present,
particularly infants and toddlers.
Children are particularly susceptible to the effects
of passive smoking. Do not allow baby-sitters
or others who work in your home to smoke indoors.
Discourage others from smoking around children.
Find out about the smoking policies of the day
care center providers, schools, and other care
givers for your children. The policy should protect
children from exposure to ETS.
Breathing secondhand smoke can be harmful to children's
health including asthma, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
(SIDS), bronchitis and pneumonia and ear infections.
Children's exposure to secondhand smoke is responsible
for: (1) increases in the number of asthma attacks
and severity of symptoms in 200,000 to 1 million
children with asthma; (2) between 150,000 and
300,000 lower respiratory tract infections (for
children under 18 months of age); and, (3) respiratory
tract infections resulting in 7,500 to 15,000
hospitalizations each year.
The developing lungs of young children are severely
affected by exposure to secondhand smoke for several
reasons including that children are still developing
physically, have higher breathing rates than adults,
and have little control over their indoor environments.
Children receiving high doses of secondhand smoke,
such as those with smoking mothers, run the greatest
risk of damaging health effects.
The 5B’s
Restaurant workers are exposed to levels of secondhand
smoke that are approximately 1.6 to 2.0 times
higher than those to which office workers are
exposed on the job. Workers in the "5 B's"(bars,
bowling alleys, billiard halls, betting establishments,
and bingo parlors) have SHS exposure levels that
are 2.4 to 18.5 times higher than those in offices,
and 1.5 to 11.7 times higher than in restaurants
- a risk level 47 times higher than the federal
government's defined level for a carcinogen. (Siegel,
M. "Involuntary Smoking in Restaurant Workplace:
A Review of Employee Exposure and Health Effects."
Journal of the American Medical Association, 270:490-493,
1993. Available at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
www.entnet.org/healthinfo/tobacco/secondhand_smoke.cfm
www.no-smoke.org
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