Airborne pollution can come in many forms, but one of the most dangerous ones is secondhand smoke. While many individuals can avoid significant exposure, employees of bars and restaurants that do not have bans on smoking are forced to work in a potentially hazardous environment.
A study done by the Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in collaboration with other institutes investigated how much secondhand smoke can really find its way into the body. Their findings were reported in the most recent edition of British Medical Journal.
From 2007 to 2009, researchers took samples from 24 bars and restaurants in America, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. They included 10 venues per city and five employees per venue. In total, 625 non-smoking and 311 smoking employees were subjected to testing to build an incredibly large and diverse study on the topic.
Locations ranged from bars right here in Baltimore all the way to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. The basis of the study looked to compute air nicotine concentrations at each location and then see if there was any correlation between that and the nicotine concentrations in the subjects' hair, a good biomarker of nicotine presence in people.
The data collected showed that air nicotine concentrations ranged from 0.1μg/m3 to 0.7μg/m3 in non-smoking locations and from 1.5μg/m3 to 8.5μg/m3 in smoking areas, a dramatic but expected increase.
Along with samples of air quality, the researchers took samples of hair from their selected participants in order to determine if there was any correlation to higher air nicotine levels. In order to maintain consistency throughout the data, researchers went to such lengths as taking hair near the back of the scalp where hair growth is uniform amongst different people.
Researchers then utilized gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to determine hair nicotine amounts. After analyzing the results, they were able to determine that for each 1μg/m3 increase in air nicotine concentrations, hair nicotine concentration went up five percent for non-smokers and three percent for smokers.
In order to account for other possible sources of nicotine, each participant was asked a series of questions to allow researchers to make necessary adjustments for age, sex, education, living with a smoker, hair treatment, region and former smoking status.
In conclusion to their data, the researchers believe that not enough bars and restaurants have rules against smoking, which puts their very own employees at risk. The 2012 study cited research done in 1993, which found that there is about a 50 percent increase in lung cancer risk among employees in bars and restaurants compared to the general population. However, as of 2011, only 11 percent of the world's population fell under protection of some sort of policy prohibiting smoking in bars, restaurants and nightclubs.
The study suggests that there is not enough non-smoking legislation but also recognizes the strides that have been made in recent years toward reducing the number of smoking venues. Researchers found that since 2008, over 385 million people have fallen under protection of smoke-free laws, a 6 percent increase in the world's population that is protected. The key now is to continue that trend in order to allow employees of bars and restaurants to breathe clean air.
