Restaurant Press Releases

Secondhand Smoke in Restaurants - A Workplace Concern

CONTACT:
Paul McIntyre or
Anne Naughton
(916) 780-0226

As evidence about the dangers of secondhand tobacco smoke continues to build, with current studies showing that 53,000 nonsmokers die annually as a result, exposure in the workplace has become a controversial issue. It is particularly divisive in restaurants where a lack of workplace smoking bans results in air quality well below that which government workers, bankers, doctors, attorneys, accountants, insurance agents and most other professions enjoy.

With regulators and policy makers continuing to enact smoking bans, the question becomes: should some workplaces be exempt? Does the nature of certain vocations, like restaurant work, require high levels of risk such as constant exposure to the 43 carcinogens in secondhand smoke?

Restaurateurs who resist smoking bans claim that if an employee is concerned about secondhand smoke exposure they should work elsewhere - they aren't forced to take the job.

While it is true that no one is forced to work in a restaurant, the industry's employment opportunities are too substantial to arbitrarily eliminate as a job potential. In fact, restaurants provide more people with their first job than any other industry.

Restaurants also rank extraordinarily high in their employment of youth. A National Cancer Institute study (Gerlac, et al., 1997) pointed out that because their work is heavily concentrated in the food service industry, workers aged 15-19 are least likely to be protected by smoke-free workplace policies.

Workers in similar industries aren't forced to make that - accept the risk or don't work here - choice. Airline flight attendants, for example, were not forced to leave their profession when the dangers of secondhand smoke became evident. Smoking on airlines was banned to remove the risk, and compensation for damage already done was successfully litigated in court.

According to the CDC, secondhand smoke causes 30 times as many lung cancer deaths as all other air pollutants combined and is particularly harmful to children. A pregnant mom working in a restaurant or bar should not have to give up her job simply because it subjects her to secondhand smoke which endangers her unborn child.

Findings on the hazards of secondhand smoke have already evoked changes in many places. Providing safe workplaces requires employers to adapt to change. To truly offer an industry of promise with healthy lifelong careers, restaurant and bar workers must have the smoke-free environment that workers in most other promising professions enjoy already.