Tobacco Wars

Woes in smoke-filled rooms

Nonsmokers have been fighting for years to get smoking banned from public places. They argue that the habit subjects nonsmokers to unpleasant odors and eye irritation. Smokers have countered that as long as they are not hurting anyone except themselves they have a right to do as they please. That reply has now been undermined by researchers at the University of California at San Diego who found that long-term exposure to cigarette smoke causes measurable lung damage in people who do not smoke.

The study, reported in last week's New England Journal of Medicine by Physiologist James White and Dr. Herman Froeb, examined the effects of smoking on 2,100 men and women. Within this group, nonsmokers who did not work in smoky environments came out best on tests of the lungs' ability to hold air and expel it. Those who had smoked more than 40 cigarettes a day for more than 20 years had the worst results. But nonsmokers who had worked for more than 20 years in smoke-filled areas had scores similar to those of light smokers (people who over two decades had smoked but not inhaled or had smoked fewer than eleven cigarettes a day). Concluded the researchers: "Chronic exposure to tobacco smoke in the work environment is deleterious to the nonsmoker."

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