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• “No smoking” areas in restaurants are not sufficient
  Hanns Moshammer
  Published on: 13 May 2016
• Partial protection provided by "no smoking" areas may be over-estimated
  Pascal A. Diethelm
  Published on: 13 May 2016

• Published on: 13 May 2016

  “No smoking” areas in restaurants are not sufficient

  • Hanns Moshammer, researcher
  • Other Contributors:
    • Inst. Environmental Health

  Sir, I read with interest the paper by Cains et al. (2004) on the effect of “no smoking” areas in licensed clubs in the metropolitan area of Sydney. They found only an insufficient effect of “no smoking” zones especially when this was only a subsection of the whole room without separation. In spite of this finding this poor protection of the non-smokers is still much favoured in the hospitality industry around the world. T...

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  Sir, I read with interest the paper by Cains et al. (2004) on the effect of “no smoking” areas in licensed clubs in the metropolitan area of Sydney. They found only an insufficient effect of “no smoking” zones especially when this was only a subsection of the whole room without separation. In spite of this finding this poor protection of the non-smokers is still much favoured in the hospitality industry around the world. Therefore I want to support the Australian findings with our preliminary data from Vienna, Austria. The Viennese cuisine is well recognised for tasty and fine meals. But the pleasure of dinners in restaurants is often diminished because of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Neither innkeepers nor guests seem to be fully aware of this problem. As part of a larger project (Moshammer and Neuberger, 2004) we did measure nicotine concentration also in some restaurants and pubs in Vienna in 2002. Only few (and usually vegetarian) restaurants are truly “non-smoking” in Vienna. We did select 6 restaurants of different standards (pubs and cheaper restaurants for the working class people and more expensive restaurants) with no separation of smokers and non-smokers and collected nicotine on a filter using a calibrated pump during lunch or dinner (in total 9 measurements). We also found two restaurants that provide a “no smoking” area but without functional separation from the smoking area: One café has declared a few tables near the entrance as “no smoking” (where the ventilation of the whole room apparently is mostly via this entrance door) and a restaurant (at the university hospital) partly separates the dining room into two parts by a shield that does not reach the ceiling.

  In the restaurants with no separation we found nicotine levels ranging from below 0.1 to 193.1 µg/m³, with an arithmetic mean of 37.1 and a median of 15.7 µg/m³. The two values obtained in the “no smoking” area of the café were 17.7 and 43.4 while the only value from the “smoking” area in the same room was only 15.7 µg/m³. In the restaurant at the hospital we measured concentrations between 6.8 and 39.5 µg/m³ (mean: 21.8, median: 19.8, in total 4 values) and in the “smoking” area (with 3 measurements) between 16.8 and 28.6 µg/m³ (mean: 23.1, median: 23.9). Although we can provide only few spot measurements it seems obvious that under certain conditions the customers in the “no smoking” area could even be more exposed than where smoking is allowed. In the other case the separation at least was not very sufficient. Any differences between the two areas were less pronounced than day-to day variations or between different restaurants with no separation at all.

  References: Cains T, Cannata S, Poulos R, Ferson MJ, Stewart BW. Designated “no smoking” areas provide from partial to no protection from environmental tobacco smoke. Tobacco Control 2004; 13: 17-22

  Moshammer H, Neuberger M. Nicotine and surface of particulates as indicators of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke in public places in Austria. Int. J. Hyg. Environ. Health 2004; in press.

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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• Published on: 13 May 2016

  Partial protection provided by "no smoking" areas may be over-estimated

  • Pascal A. Diethelm, President, OxyGenève

  Cains et al., studying the extent to which designated "no smoking" areas provide protection from environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), conclude that such areas achieve some reduction in the level of exposure of individuals to ETS. They indicate an average 53% reduction in nicotine levels and 52% reduction in PM10 levels. These numbers, although not marginal, are not sufficient to provide an adequate level of protection....

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  Cains et al., studying the extent to which designated "no smoking" areas provide protection from environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), conclude that such areas achieve some reduction in the level of exposure of individuals to ETS. They indicate an average 53% reduction in nicotine levels and 52% reduction in PM10 levels. These numbers, although not marginal, are not sufficient to provide an adequate level of protection.

  It should be added that these numbers probably overestimate the actual exposure reduction obtained by introducing a division of the space between a "smoking" and a "no smoking" area. To estimate such a reduction, one would need to compare exposure to ETS in a situation where smoking is permitted in the entire space versus the exposure level in the "no smoking" area when the space is split. This difference is the real measure of improvement (if any) brought by the introduction of separated areas. Comparing the exposure to ETS between the "smoking" and "no smoking" areas after such introduction has taken place is not equivalent. Such comparison takes as its reference the "smoking area" in which the level of smoking per unit volume may be much higher than in a space in which smoking is permitted everywhere. It is indeed reasonable to expect that the "smoking" area be occupied by a higher proportion of smokers, who probably smoke more (owing to the social validation of smoking that such an area provides). This situation may even have over time have a self-exacerbating effect, since some (light) smokers may prefer to go to the "no smoking" area as even they get growingly incommodated by the high level of ETS in the "smoking" area.

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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