Controlling air quality is the route to reforming smoking bans

Controlling air quality is the route to reforming smoking bans first published by ThinkScotland

A DAY DOES NOT PASS when we are not asked to believe that a substance that most people were breathing since the beginning of time – smoke from ordinary plant materials – cannot be dealt with using modern air cleaning technology. For all the literature produced about it, there have been no medical cases where causation of medical conditions has been categorically proven to be due to low levels of exposure to tobacco smoke – a fact that has made many people question the need for any smoking ban, never mind one as comprehensive as the one found in Scotland.

Recently I proposed, on behalf of Freedom to Choose (Scotland)¹, Scottish Parliament petition 01451 (Review of smoking ban) in order to challenge the assumptions of the health lobby, whose underlying motivation is to discourage smoking, that smoke is a toxin that no air cleaning technology can now or will ever be able to deal with safely, that there is no safe level of tobacco smoke, and, most definitely, that ventilation doesn't work.

Declaring that never will technology be able to clear the emissions from smoking seems to be the product of a mindset that does not want to enable smokers to be catered for either in the workplace or in recreational venues. The position of Freedom to Choose (Scotland) is that society's interests should be met rather than resisted. A blanket prohibition on smoking makes it harder for people to get together socially, and this affects people more in districts where concentrations of smokers are higher, aggravating inequalities in many ways.

It is generally true that in workplaces there is a principle that exposure to toxins is best avoided if at all possible, however it has also always been recognised that different workplaces involve different sorts of exposures to different levels of risks from different sources that are difficult to avoid without fundamentally challenging the nature of that workplace.

Asking schoolteachers and children to put up with classrooms that had tanning lamps installed and running in the ceilings would be unacceptable, yet we allow restaurants to install patio dining and drinking facilities where their workers are "forced" to expose themselves on a daily basis to the risk of malignant melanoma from solar radiation. Just as with any Class A carcinogen, there is, theoretically, no safe level of exposure to sunlight, yet we do not ban patio dining: we accept that workers can reduce the risk through partial protection provided by clothing, awnings, and sunscreen use.

We tolerate workers being exposed to levels of carbon monoxide and diesel exhaust products in indoor garages that would never be acceptable in a day-care centre: we do not simply ban indoor garages, however we accept the partial protection afforded by modern ventilation and air filtration technology.

Freedom to Choose (Scotland) is urging that the same sort of thought be applied to allowing pubs freedom of choice in deciding their own smoking policies based upon the wishes of their owners, workers, and clientele.

The ambient air, into which tobacco smoke is released, is not clean in the first place, making it well nigh impossible to isolate secondary smoke as the cause of sickness because pollutants contained in smoke are not limited to smoke. So not only is smoke not avoidable, but removing it still leaves air containing viruses, bacteria, spores, pollen, and plain old smells.

If the advocates of smoking bans are interested in clean air, their method of extracting one specific source of so-called ‘toxins’ (tobacco smoke) and leaving us with record-breaking pollutant levels in the general atmosphere lacks all logic. Their purpose is clearly and simply to discourage tobacco use by pinning all kinds of respiratory, heart and lung conditions on to smoking (or secondary smoke), in spite of the exposures to other toxins or adverse environmental conditions in the workplace, on the battlefield, or even in the home.

There are specific, measurable standards of occupational exposure to airborne contaminants, and permissible exposures vary between different jurisdictions. In saying that there is ‘no safe level’, the enemies of tobacco smoke declare that there is no point in measuring tobacco smoke which, because it is so lethal, one cannot be exposed to at all. In fact it is a mix of particles and gases, each constituent of which can be said to have a permissible safe level expressed in parts per million or billion. If people are smoking in a given air space and these permissible levels are not exceeded (for whatever reason: the room is large with a high ceiling, the window is open) there cannot be said to be a danger. When the level of smoking approaches impermissible levels, air-cleaning equipment can be used. Permissible standards are the guide regardless of whether or not a facility allows smoking.

Equipment that cleans air employs various technologies: extraction and filtration, ionising technology, and others: sometimes combined within a single unit. Any equipment that cleans air has to be maintained and serviced to ensure efficient running.

Any venue that wishes to permit smoking needs to ensure that its air-flow can cope with it. The industry should carry an audit of recommended equipment for all sizes of venue and price ranges but with specific air quality requirements in mind. Establishments that wish to allow smoking can then obtain the equipment, and once in place, patrons can be invited to smoke.

The result should be that ambient air, even with the addition of smoking, treated with air cleaning equipment, gives a cleaner result than ambient air in a non-smoking establishment where no treatment of air has taken place.

Of course upholding such standards would be an ongoing concern of the industry, with the assistance of environmental officers. But using local environmental officers to uphold and maintain air quality standards rather than simply hand out tickets to smokers is a far better use of local resources. This is about priorities.

Freedom to Choose (Scotland) believes that smoking bans damage people, increasing their isolation; and damage businesses, when they are helpless to alleviate a problem because of overzealous regulation. Taken to extremes, both isolation and business failure are measurably detrimental to health. With the rapidly increasing air pollution rates and increasing numbers of lung cancers found in non-smokers (Glasgow is one of the most polluted cities in the UK), sending people outside on to the street to smoke is worse than fiddling while Rome burns.

The power of the health lobby is a significant obstacle. We should be able to allow the hospitality industry (together with the appropriate government agency) to set standards for air quality, to give the air-cleaning industry the specifications it needs for improving ambient air, and in doing so create spaces with improved air quality where smoking can take place with the minimum of inconvenience to anyone else.

¹ Freedom to Choose (Scotland) includes both smokers and non-smokers and receives no support from any industry.

Scotsman reports on petition

Having submitted two previous petitions (both listed in the side bar) on the smoking ban, press attention was something I did not particularly expect. However the Scotsman has given this account, and it is a fair one:

A group called Freedom to Choose Scotland, which has previously lobbied for an end to the ban, says that new European Air Quality standards on indoor areas, published since the smoking ban, backs up its case.

The group says these guidelines do not suggest good practice involves a ban on smoking. It is recognised as a pollutant, along with others, but ventilation requirements are set out to deal with these.

The Petition states: “Ventilation, or clean air technology is a developing science and ventilation includes extraction and other methods of air cleaning,

It adds: “Any effective air cleaning system removes toxins regardless of their source.”

The EC document that first prompted us to submit Petition 01451 is called EN 13779 – Ventilation for non-residential buildings. As the petition says, its section on 'good practice' does not call for a general smoking ban. but concerns the quality of air brought in from outside and the way exhaust air is released. I would be lying if I claimed to understand it all. But the point is that the rules are the same for tobacco smoke as for everything else. Indeed if you look at Table 3 (p. 17) you will see that, while smoking is treated differently from non-smoking, even smoking is described only as a 'moderate' level of pollution.

The article also picks out another important point: removing toxins 'regardless of their source'. Why single out a single source of (relatively mild) pollutants when our whole environment is stuffed with regulation-breaking levels of them? It really doesn't make sense.

It makes no more sense than to say the doctrinaire solution of preventing smoking in public places will always prevail, when we have the collective will and the understanding required to obviate the need for a comprehensive ban.

So a huge thanks to Scott MacNab for the write-up in the Scotsman. It comes shortly after stories in the media about pub closures prompted by a report: 'Local pub, local hub? The future of the Scottish community pub', which you can download from here. The report does not flinch from the impact of the smoking ban on pubs, but its main concern is the duty escalator on beer, which has made it much more expensive for consumers in recent years. It describes Scottish pub closures in stark terms: 703 community closed in Scotland since 2007 (nearly one-fifth of the total). This cannot be doing Scottish social and community life any favours.

More soon.

Petition link here: please keep sharing, the closing date is 22 October!

No new evidence? New petition launched

Four years ago the European Commission published an indoor air quality standard entitled:

Ventilation for non-residential buildings - Performance

requirements for ventilation and room-conditioning systems

The document refers to smoking several times. One example:

The level of air quality required, and the method of classification applied shall be specified. Whether smoking is allowed or not is an important input. The necessary air flow rates to achieve the specified requirements shall be calculated. If nothing is declared, the rates of outdoor air per person for Indoor Air Quality category IDA 2 can be used as a default.

The European Commission, the details of whose forthcoming (and rather savage) revised tobacco directive have been leaked to the press, have published evidence that tobacco smoke can be dealt with in the same way as any other toxin. In essence this is (1) establishing a safe air quality standard; (2) advising how to remove the toxins in cases where the air quality standard is breached.

Somehow in spite of having published this guidance on air quality, the European Commission has adopted an authoritarian stance recommending smoking bans in all indoor workplaces everywhere in Europe, as if there were no other solution available to a mild toxicity problem.

PE 01451, Review of smoking ban

The smoking ban in Scotland is based on this extreme position, and the new petition PE 01451 asks the Scottish Parliament to request the Scottish Government to take seriously the existence of a European standard that should enable smoking rooms to operate.

A FOI request established that the Scottish Government had no record of this standard as of last summer, even though it was published in 2008. It is therefore new evidence, which the Parliament did not have access to when the legislation went through in 2005. All they had (or all they paid attention to) was the mantras 'there is no safe level of secondary smoke' and 'ventilation doesn't work'.

Scotsman: World is adopting the smoking ban: denying the wisdom of ages

Surely the message from this piece by Scotsman consumer affairs correspondent Jane Bradley is that the rest of the world isn't adopting the smoking ban – at least not with the 'zero tolerance' approach adopted throughout the United Kingdom.

Bradley claims that the smoking ban has halved children's exposure to smoke (this seems a bit unlikely to me but no doubt she has studied the 'correct' sources) and that the smoking ban was 'likely' to be here to stay. She speaks of other 'countries' going further than the UK (referring to individual US states and possibly states in Australia), but also refers to countries, like the Netherlands, where the ban has not gained popular support.

Simon Clark of Forest is quoted as having pretty much given up on Scotland as a lost cause ('I think we are resigned to the fact that we are unlikely to make much headway in getting the ban reverted in Scotland'). Never say die, Simon. Bradley does however acknowledge the unpopularity of the ban with publicans:

Limited opposition to the ban in Scotland, makes this option unlikely, though it would be a welcome move for disgruntled publicans who say people are staying at home to drink while smoking. It is estimated that more than 450 pubs have shut down in Scotland since the ban was introduced five years ago.

The ever present Sheila Duffy of ASH Scotland deplores the suggestion of amending the ban declaring that 'only a blanket ban offers complete protection from second-hand smoke'. She then urges people to ban smoking in their own cars in order to achieve even more protection from second-hand smoke – she's nothing if not thorough.

The article finishes with the nonsense that smoking while driving is not safe – typical of the tunnel vision adopted by people from every walk of life who wish to discourage smoking. The number of journeys completed safely on a daily basis is testament to the nonsense of this statement. The only things that make driving unsafe are inattention, faulty mechanics, alcohol and certain other medications, and bad luck/other drivers. (You can see road casualties from this link here: Table ras:10001 for numbers of accidents and Table ras:30002 for numbers of casualties. Clearly it would be better if we didn't have so many, but I don't see how you can come out with smoking as a factor on the basis of anything better than supposition.)

Bradley claims that the smoking ban is likely to stay, and even Forest despairs of removing it. But no smoking ban is needed. And while the ban hasn't brought demonstrators to the streets in Scotland as it has in the Netherlands or Spain, there is no doubt that smokers would increase their attendance in public venues if there were no ban. It is simply normal behaviour to congregate, whether over tea and coffee or over a drink.

No smoking ban is needed, because smoke is only one of a number of pollutants that were discussed in an air quality standard that was drawn up in 2007 for the whole of Europe. Table A1 shows levels of pollutants in indoor air (four levels, of which smoking takes place in levels 2, 3 and 4), and there are detailed descriptions of how to dispel the pollutants. Technically beyond my comprehension, but it certainly doesn't say: 'Don't even try and get rid of tobacco smoke. Can't be done – but here's how to deal with kitchen and garage exhausts, paints and solvents.'

All this technology exists because somebody has identified a need to extract pollutants from air. The need is there, followed by the application of science to meet the need. The wisdom of 'anti-smoking' seeks to overturn the wisdom of centuries in the words of Rollo Tommasi (comment 15). 'No air management system can protect people in a room from smoke produced in that room.' We can make aeroplanes, rockets, perform surgery, make bridges that can carry formidable amounts of traffic – design all manner of hardware, software, learn languages, apply computer languages to make virtual reality. But we can't move smoke? ever?

Try this, Rollo.

Air quality standard eliminates need for smoking ban

Bill Gibson of TICAP (The International Coalition Against Prohibition) attended last month's meeting at Westminster supporting an amendment to the smoking ban. His response is published below (Annandale Herald, 7 July):

 

 There is indeed a European-approved air quality standard (EN 13779) as stated in this letter. This standard acknowledges that smoking is an important factor in air quality but simply handles smoky air differently from air in a non-smoking environment. 

It doesn't state that it's impossible to remove smoke from the air, in spite of what the EU published two years after this standard appeared. 'There is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke, and notions such as a threshold value for toxicity from second-hand smoke should be rejected, as they are contradicted by scientific evidence.' Eh? The air quality standard (EN 13779) doesn't even argue that smoke isn't toxic – in fact it  specifies tobacco smoke as an air quality issue that must be resolved in order to achieve good indoor air. The idea that tobacco smoke is the only pollutant that cannot be dealt with effectively by technology is laughable. 

Air Manager is an officially approved air cleaning system. Question 7 of its Frequently Asked Questions reads 'Does Air Manager remove harmful chemicals?' The answer: 'Yes. AirManager is scientifically proven to remove chemicals, VOCs (volatile organic compounds), tobacco smoke etc in excess of 99.999% in a single pass.' I can only repeat, Air Manager is an officially approved system (UK Accreditation Service). Why do they go to the trouble of approving this technology, only to then allow another government department to convince the public that it doesn't really work?

Bill Gibson does right to draw attention to EN 13779 (air quality standard) document and show its relevance in the smoking ban impasse.

Update 9 August: The EC has carelessly lost track of the link to the key document, EN 13779. Courtesy of Freedom2Choose we now have an alternative link to the original document.

SLTA invites Dutch and Croats to reconsider smoking ban

The Scottish Licensed Trade Association has invited licensees from countries where the smoking rules are more relaxed – the Netherlands, Croatia and Hungary – to a meeting with Scottish licensees in order to explore possibilities of relaxing the ban.

At a time when the world awaits an avalanche of outdoor smoking bans (following New York) and apartment bans (following Australia), perhaps the last thing anyone expected was for the Scottish licensed trade to announce that smoking bans in pubs are not needed! This is not in fact what the SLTA is saying to the press – they are looking for 'some accommodation', not a return to the old days.

Good luck to them. Bringing Scottish licensees face-to-face with their counterparts who have fought successfully against restrictions in other countries is an inspired move, and we hope it will restore some confidence to our licensed trade.

In the mean time, the Scottish licensed trade and all hospital managers should know that there is a European Air Quality Standard, EN 13779, that deals with non-residential human occupancy and discusses tobacco smoke as just one of a range of conditions in buildings that must be dealt with. This documented is dated 2007, so it has been known for some time that tobacco smoke is reckoned to be a problem capable of resolution. There never has been a need for a smoking ban, and the whole of Europe should know it by now.