Passive smoking 'kills 500 a year'

By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter

Second-hand cigarette smoke kills more than 500 New Zealanders a year, say lobbyists gearing up for a fight to tighten smokefree laws.

Anti-smoking groups are shining the spotlight on smoky bars in which they claim workers are being poisoned by carcinogens such as benzene and other toxic components of cigarettes.

They say some bar staff daily inhale as much smoke as if they had smoked two packets of cigarettes.

The groups want to turn the political tide in favour of banning smoking in bars after the Alliance said in May that most of its MPs would vote against the measure.

Health Minister Annette King had previously intended to introduce a ban, along with making cafes and restaurants fully smokefree, as part of the Smokefree Environments (Enhanced Protection) Bill now before the health select committee.

The director of Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), Trish Fraser, said yesterday that Government-commissioned research to be released soon would put the number of deaths from so-called passive smoking at about 500.

Inhaling secondhand smoke was the leading environmental cause of preventable death in New Zealand, killing about twice as many people as melanoma and other skin cancers related to ultraviolet light, she said.

The main direct causes of passive-smoking deaths - lung cancer, heart disease and stroke - were the same as for active smoking, which killed an estimated 4500 a year.

Trish Fraser said the focus in the debate over banning smoking in bars had been on patrons but Ash wanted to shift it to workers. An estimated 6500 of the 11,000 people working in bars, cafes and restaurants were routinely exposed to secondhand smoke.

Ash legal adviser Jennifer Lamm said that under the Health and Safety in Employment Act secondhand smoke was a hazard so employers must protect their bar workers and patrons from it. Relying on standard ventilation methods was not sufficient.

But Labour Minister Margaret Wilson says in a letter to the supervisor of the Wellington School of Medicine study, George Thomson, that the Occupational Safety and Health service believed "general ventilation" plus monitoring of staff health were reasonably practicable steps that bar and cafe employers could take to prevent harm to workers.

Restaurant Association chief executive Neville Waldron said people who wanted a smokefree workplace should perhaps choose another job.