Legislation for smoke-free workplaces statewide is pending in the state House and Senate while advocacy groups like the American Lung Association work to educate Pennsylvanians on the importance of safer, healthier work environments.
Representative Larry Sather is one of 15 co-sponsors of the House bill, introduced May 4, which is awaiting action in the Health and Human Services Committee. The House bill includes a provision for ventilated smoking rooms, which advocates of the bill do not support, as it allows exemptions for smokers in the workplace. Hearings are expected in July or August.
The Senate bill, known as the Clean Indoor Air Act, includes fines for smokers in the workplace and also awaits action. Preliminary hearings are expected to be held this fall.
Don Schumaker, communications director of the Pennsylvania Alliance to Control Tobacco (PACT), likens smoking in the workplace to asbestos in the workplace.
“Asbestos was the accepted material for insulation, but when they found it caused cancer, laws were passed to have asbestos removed,” he said.
“For 12 years, we’ve known cigarette smoke causes cancer and it’s time to do something.”
About 75 percent of Pennsylvanians are nonsmokers. Secondhand smoke is a known human carcinogen and kills up to 3,400 nonsmokers in Pennsylvania each year. In the U.S., for every eight smokers who die from their own habit, one person dies from exposure to someone else’s tobacco smoke.
Exposure to second-hand smoke can cause cancer, heart disease and various serious respiratory ailments, which is why a majority of Pennsylvanians — 63 percent to 34 percent — feel the right to breathe clean air without exposure to second-hand smoke is more important than the rights of business owners to allow customers to smoke.
Though many workplaces are smoke-free, restaurants and entertainment venues like bowling alleys remain hazy. Schumaker said statewide legislation banning smoking in workplaces is necessary because a 1988 preemption bill forbids municipalities from enacting laws stricter than those of the state.
“The state law on smoking in workplaces was good in 1988, but not in 2005,” he said. “We know now that second-hand smoke causes problems. This is not an anti-smoking movement — go smoke in the car, at home, outside. But don’t smoke where other people are affected. We’re trying to put together the cleanest, safest workplace possible. It’s a health issue. This is for the bartender, chef and anyone else who spends a day’s shift in a workplace where smoking is permitted.”
Economic concerns surrounding state smoke bans generally end up as empty as unused ashtrays in states like Delaware and New York, where public places are smoke-free and business remains steady.
In fact, tax receipts from bars and restaurants in New York City from April 2003 to January 2004 show an 8.7 percent increase. Studies by the National Restaurant Association, Gallup Poll and Zagat
Surveys show customers prefer smoke-free dining — 82 percent of 110,000 American restaurant-goers surveyed in a Zagat survey believe restaurants should be entirely smoke free.
Owners whose businesses are smoke-free can save money with less cleaning and repainting, no cigarette burns to repair, lower ventilation costs and possible reductions in fire and property insurance. In smoke-free bars and restaurants, customer turnover is often faster, as non-smokers do not linger for coffee refills and after-dinner cigarettes. In the last two years, the percentage of the U.S. population covered by smoke-free laws has more than doubled.
In PACT’s 2005 survey, 80 percent of Pennsylvanians polled said they support prohibiting smoking in workplaces, and 71 percent, including smokers, say they are concerned abut the effects of tobacco smoke pollution.
Tobacco smoke pollution contains 4,000 chemicals, including 200 poisons and more than 50 carcinogenic chemicals.
The Environmental Protection Agency classified tobacco smoke as a known human Class A carcinogen in 1992. It is as dangerous as asbestos, benzene and vinyl chloride.
