SHEFFIELD – The Partnership for a Tobacco-Free Shoals presented to the Sheffield City Council a study that harshly indicts city bars and restaurants which allow smoking. The study, was spearheaded by Melanie Dickens of Sheffield and was conducted by the Department of Health Behavior and Aerosol Pollution Exposure Research Laboratory of The Roswell Park Cancer Institute in upstate New York.
Here is the full text of the news release:
“Workers in Sheffield bars and restaurants that allow smoking are breathing hazardous amounts of pollution because of exposure to secondhand smoke, according to a recent study released by the Partnership for a Tobacco-Free Shoals.
The workers are exposed to air pollution levels 18 times higher than smoke-free restaurants and bars in Sheffield, according to the study. Workers in these smoking venues are exposed to more than seventimes the safe annual level of pollution set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“Numerous studies have shown that food service and bar workers in restaurants that allow smoking have a 50 percent greater chance of dying from lung cancer,” said Renee Mullins, coalition spokesperson. “But no one should have to choose between their health and a paycheck.”
Trained volunteers monitored the air quality in seven restaurants and bars in February. The volunteers spent a minimum of 30 minutes in four venues permitting indoor smoking and three venues which did not allow smoking indoors.
The amount of fine particle air pollution was measured through the use of a TSI SidePak AM510 Personal Aerosol Monitor. The results were analyzed by Dr. Mark Travers, Department of Health Behavior and Aerosol Pollution Exposure Research Laboratory (APERL), at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Travers, who has degrees in biomedical engineering and epidemiology, has conducted the largest study of tobacco smoke pollution exposure in the hospitality industry. His research has been featured in debates over smoke-free air legislation in dozens of communities.
Travers has analyzed the results of monitoring studies in six other cities around the state including Gadsden, Dothan, Moulton, Selma, Montgomery, and Tuscaloosa. Restaurants and bars allowing smoking that were tested in these cities all showed unhealthy and often hazardous levels of pollution because of the secondhand smoke exposure, according to Travers’ reports.
“Not surprisingly this study found extremely high levels of harmful air pollution in indoor places with smoking,” Travers said. “In fact, the only time outdoor particle concentrations in the U.S. ever reach the levels seen from smoking in this study are during a forest fire.”
The study monitored fine particle air pollution, which is released in significant amounts from burning cigarettes, easily inhaled deep into the lungs, and cause a variety of adverse health effects including cardiovascular and respiratory disease and death, according to the report.
The Partnership for a Tobacco-Free Shoals’s goal was to determine pollution levels in venues where smoking was permitted indoors and compare it to smoke-free locations. The group has been educating the public on the dangers of secondhand smoke and how a smoke-free environment can protect the health of all citizens.
Secondhand smoke is the smoke produced from the end of a burning cigarette as well as what a smoker exhales from the lungs. Secondhand smoke contains at least 250 chemicals that are known to be toxic and cause cancer. In 2006, the Surgeon General said there was no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke. Cancer, strokes, heart attacks, respiratory diseases, hearing loss and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome are several of the health hazards of secondhand smoke exposure.
“Smoke-free workplaces are long overdue in our communities,” said Ginny Campbell, chair of the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Alabama. “Studies have shown the cost of these policies to implement is very little to none, they have no negative effect on the bottom line of businesses and, most importantly, they create a safe and healthy environment for people to work and visit.”
Sheffield does not have a comprehensive smoke-free ordinance. But in a 2011 poll of 1,379 of its residents, more than 74% said that breathing secondhand smoke is very harmful to one’s health. Almost three-fourths of those surveyed said that smoking should not be allowed in workplaces.
The air quality monitoring study was funded by a grant from the Office on Smoking and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
