Where there's smoke...there's a ban

Each year more than 79,000 adults in the EU die due to passive smoking, according to findings in a report entitled: "Lifting the Smokescreen: 10 reasons for a smoke free Europe". This is the first attempt to put a figure on the deaths specifically caused by passive smoking and offers proof that measures to stop it are feasible and popular. It calls for legislation to prevent smoking in all enclosed public areas and workplaces including bars and restaurants.

 

The report was published by the Smoke Free Partnership, a forum grouping a number of European and national cancer and heart research bodies, and was launched in the European Parliament by British Liberal Democrat Liz Lynne and Adamos Adamou, MEP for the Cypriot Progressive Party of Working People. "The overall objective of the report and this launch is to provide the impetus for a set of recommendations on smoke free policies," Mr Adamou said. 

 

An estimated 72,000 Europeans are killed each year by passive smoking at home and 7,000 in the workplace. Workers in restaurants, bars, pubs and nightclubs are especially vulnerable, with a death toll of 325 a year - one a day for a six-day working week.

 

Professor John Britton, from Nottingham University, the spokesman for the Smoke Free Partnership was critical of the tobacco industry's approach to smoky workplaces. "Ventilation doesn't work and voluntary measures don't work either. The only way is smoke free". The successes "show it can be done easily and effectively". 

 

 

Tobacco is the most important source of indoor contaminants in smoky environments. Around 85% of smoke in a room is "sidestream smoke" - the smoke between puffs. It is seen as more toxic than inhaled and exhaled smoke because a cigarette held in the hand or smouldering in an ashtray burns at a lower temperature releasing a different combination of chemicals with larger amounts of some toxic elements.

 

Professor Konrad Jamrozik from the University of Queensland said that the "estimates of the deaths caused by passive smoking are conservative. They include deaths from heart disease, strokes, lung cancer and some respiratory disease caused by passive smoking but they omit deaths in childhood due to this cause and deaths in adults due to other conditions related to smoking, such as pneumonia".