As posted in the OC REGISTER, 7/20/10
Will apartment complexes be the next smoke-free slice of life? Well, the city of Sebastopol in northern California is now considering a ban on smoking in apartments. Plus, a recent essay in The New England Journal of Medicine advocates that smoking should be banned in all multi-family housing and called on the federal government to prohibit tobacco smoke in Public Housing Authorities.
While governments have banned smoking in public places, private homes have been considered off-limits for such regulation. The journal argues that policy should end. Indeed, all apartments should be smoke free, it maintained:
“A resident who smokes in a single unit within a multiunit residential building puts the residents of the other units at risk. Tobacco smoke can move along air ducts, through cracks in the walls and floors, through elevator shafts, and along plumbing and electrical lines to affect units on other floors. High levels of tobacco toxins can persist in the indoor environment long after the period of active smoking — a phenomenon known as third-hand smoke. Tobacco toxins are distributed as volatile compounds and airborne particulate matter that are deposited on indoor surfaces and reemitted in the air over a period of days to years.”
In Orange County, about 36 Orange County landlords have registered their properties as tobacco-free with the Granada Hills-based Smokefree Apartment House Registry. The registry says there are at least 324 known units that are off-limits to smokers.
What do you think ? Should cigarette smoking be banned in apartments ?