Evidence Is In:Let’s Clear the Air : Findings on danger of ‘secondhand’ tobacco smoke demand action

Two years ago researchers at UC San Francisco offered startling evidence that passive smoking, meaning the involuntary inhaling of tobacco smoke by nonsmokers, has become the third leading cause of avoidable fatal diseases, trailing only smoking itself and alcohol abuse.

A month later the staff of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a report recommending that second-hand tobacco smoke be designated a Class A carcinogen, putting it in the same category as asbestos, benzene and deliberately inhaled tobacco smoke as a cause of lung cancer. Now the American Heart Assn., supported by the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Assn., says “overwhelming” evidence links passive smoking with tens of thousands of heart-disease deaths each year. The Heart Assn. says tobacco smoke should be treated as an “environmental toxin” and that workers and the public should be protected from its hazards.

As a practical matter, that would require widening existing bans on smoking in public places and private-sector work areas. The Heart Assn. says 46 states now ban smoking in public places, while 17 restrict it in the workplace. Smoking is prohibited in most hospitals and aboard airliners, while most restaurants now have smoking and nonsmoking sections. The Heart Assn. says, however, that although separation of smokers and nonsmokers “within the same airspace” reduces exposure, it doesn’t eliminate it. It says: “The only sure way to protect nonsmokers from environmental tobacco smoke is to eliminate smoking” within shared airspace.

Two years ago the California Restaurant Assn. said it supported a statewide ban on smoking in restaurants. The key word is statewide , for experience shows that a ban imposed only in certain jurisdictions puts restaurants in those areas at a competitive disadvantage. A statewide ban remains highly desirable. More preferable still is national action to protect nonsmokers everywhere from the hazards of smoking. The evidence that a public health problem exists is compelling. No room for equivocation remains.