NEWS
Study: Blue-collar employees more subject to secondhand smoke
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by Julia Westhoff
Tuesday, March 5, 2002
The city of Madison recently banned smoking in the workplace, and if the Wisconsin Tobacco Control Board has its way, the rest of the state will soon follow.
The board published the results of a study done by the University of Wisconsin’s Tobacco Monitoring and Evaluation Program, which found that Wisconsin employees are divided into two distinct smoking groups.
The study showed that blue-collar employees, especially those working in the recreation and tavern industry, are subjected to second-hand smoke more than white-collar employees, who have clean air in their workplace.
“We were surprised to find that the primary difference in policies was found in the industry of the workplace,” Barbara Hill, the study’s main author said. “Restaurant, tavern and many manufacturing workers are subject to the dangers of second-hand smoke at far higher numbers than their counterparts in white-collar employment. Most blue-collar employees do not smoke, yet they are subjected to often-high concentrations of smoke for up to 40 hours per week.”
The study, conducted on behalf of the Wisconsin Tobacco Control Board, analyzed over 1200 Wisconsin workplaces. Forty percent of blue-collar workplaces allowed employees to be exposed to second-hand smoke, compared with 13 percent of workplaces that are predominantly white-collar.
The study, done last year, found that 74 percent of state workplaces are smoke-free. Findings also showed that the size of the workplace made little difference in the percentage of workplaces with smoke-free policies. The Wisconsin Tobacco Control Board’s established a goal of 90 percent of the state’s workplaces to be smoke-free by 2005.
The range of exposure to second-hand smoke varied from 53 percent in restaurants and other recreational worksites to only 1 percent in health care. Manufacturing, the state’s largest single sector with over 600,000 employees, allows smoking in 34 percent of the worksites.
According to Hill, a 1996 survey conducted by the Bureau of Census, showed that Wisconsin ranked 37 out of 50 states in terms of employers who allowed smoking in the workplace.
Although she could not comment on Wisconsin’s current placement, Hill said, “Other states are doing quite a bit better than we are.”
The study also found concern about the health of employees and customers was the reason most often cited by employers for instituting smoking policies.
“Second hand smoke causes heart disease and cancer,” Patrick J. Remington, MD, MPH, Director of the Monitoring and Evaluation Program and Associate Director of the UW Cancer Center said. “It also causes a number of respiratory illnesses including bronchitis.”
Remington said the dangerous chemicals in tobacco smoke should be treated as any other dangerous chemicals would be.
“Few, if any, employers would allow these chemicals with their toxic effects to be released in the workplace, if it were anything other than tobacco smoke,” he said. “There is no clinical reason why tobacco smoke should be treated differently than any other toxin with this capacity to cause disease.”
