Passive Smoking Is Workplace
Killer Pressure mounted on Britain on Monday to
take action on 1 smoking with new
research showing second-hand smoke 2 about one worker each week in the hospitality industry.
Professor Konrad Jamrozik, of Imperial College in London, told a conference on
environmental tobacco that second-hand 3 kills 49 employees in pubs, bars, restaurants and hotels each year and
contributes to 700 deaths from lung cancer, heart 4
and stroke across the total national work force.
"Exposure in the hospitality 5 at work
outweighs the consequences of exposure of living 6
a smoker for those staff," Jamrozik said in an
interview. Other 7 have measured the levels of exposure to passive smoking but Jamrozik
calculated how it would translate into avoidable deaths. His
findings are 8 on the number of people
working in the hospitality industry in Britain, their exposure to second-hand
smoke and their 9 of dying from
it. Jamrozik said the findings would apply to 10 countries in Europe because, to a greater or
11 extent, levels of smoking in the
community are similar. Professor Carol Black, president of the
Royal College of Physicians, which sponsored the meeting said the research is
proof of the need for a ban on smoking in 12
places. "Environmental tobacco smoke in pubs,
bars, restaurants and other public places is 13
damaging to the health of employees as well as the general
public," she said in a statement. "Making these places smoke
free not only protects vulnerable staff and the public, it will 14 help over 300,000 people in Britain to stop
smoking completely," she added. Ireland recently became the
first country to introduce a national ban on smoking in public 15 . New York and parts of Australia have taken
similar measures.