Chances are that you’re a nonsmoker. And, if you are like 80 percent of nonsmokers, you’ll say you are bothered by secondhand smoke. Yet, if you head out to a bar this weekend, you’ll return with your clothes reeking of smoke and your body in worse shape.
It doesn’t have to be that way: it is time for Madison to extend its smoking ban to bars. Students must demand — and alders must pursue — nothing less.
The obvious reasons for such a ban are, well, obvious. Beyond smelly and sullied clothes and skin, many people experience nasal congestion, hoarseness and irritation of the eyes, nose and throat. Smoke is also a major trigger of asthma attacks.
There is a good reason smoking bans are so prevalent and that a staggering 90 percent of the public supports restricting or banning smoking in public areas.
But even these most serious of complaints are simply symptoms — SOS messages from your body, cries from your arteries and alveoli for the most basic of physiological OSHA compliance.
Secondhand smoke exposure immediately reduces your body’s ability to deliver and use oxygen. Your heart must work harder to convert oxygen, your blood’s chemistry changes and your risk of blood clotting increases. A 1996 study even determined secondhand smoke exposure causes as much damage to the cardiovascular system of young adults as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
When you inhale secondhand smoke (in other words, when you’re in a bar and you decide, “What the heck, I think I’ll breathe”), your body is assaulted by more than 4,000 chemical compounds. Lead, nickel, arsenic, cyanide and formaldehyde make the toxin-packed list, as do 43 known carcinogens.
There’s more. Secondhand smoke contains twice as much tar and nicotine, five times as much carbon monoxide and upwards of 50 times as much ammonia as the smoke inhaled by smokers. Point that out to the guy lighting up next to you at the bar.
And even after he leaves, the discharged toxins will still threaten your health. Secondhand smoke can be just as dangerous, if not more so, when it is no longer noticeably present in the air. As it ages, it enters a vapor stage where even more chemical constituents appear. Moreover, a recent Swiss study concluded a whopping 670,000 cubic feet of fresh air are required to neutralize the smell of just one cigarette.
Fatalities are merely one measure of the insidious effects of this smoke: each year, more people die from secondhand smoke exposure than from all motor-vehicle crashes. In fact, secondhand smoke is the second leading preventable cause of death, behind only smoking itself.
But this isn’t news to you. Sure, maybe you didn’t realize secondhand smoke is a Group A carcinogen, one of only 15 pollutants (including benzene, asbestos and radon) to achieve this dubious distinction. But you do know that smoke stinks, that it’s harmful and that you’re quite possibly inhaling it regularly.
Corporate champions of smoking like Philip Morris also know this, which is why they are fiercely resisting the protection of nonsmokers with the same tactics and audacity they employed in their 50-year denial of the dangers of active smoking.
They’ll suggest (against all evidence to the contrary in California) that banning smoking in bars would somehow threaten tavern revenue. They’ll use science-deficient terms like “accommodation” as weapons to derail meaningful health protections. And they’ll even try to tell you that, when you go to a bar, you want to inhale 43 carcinogens, thicken your arteries, damage your lungs and heart, and return home smelly and sullied.
They will eventually lose. But every day smoking continues in bars is a defeat for public health, student health, your health.
The mayor and the Madison City Council have an opportunity and an obligation to extend the protections of Madison’s smoking bans to include taverns. Likewise, students have an opportunity and an obligation to tell them to do just that — cut through the smoke and score a victory for clean air.
Bryant Walker Smith ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in civil engineering.
