Not to mention that the stink ruins the patio for non-smokers. Kingston's smoking by-laws have included patios since they came into effect for restaurants and bars - catch up, Toronto and Ottawa!
Where there’s smoke
Fri, 08/06/2010 - 07:23
So you’re a smoker who imagines the assault is finally over. You’ve been deprived of your addiction in public spaces, denied your weed in offices and airplanes and, the final insult, told you can’t light up in restaurants. The scant few corners of the world left in which your poisoned air is still welcome are few and far between. And now, here comes another blow to your shrinking and miserable existence: the very real speculation that Toronto restaurant patios might be next on the striking block of free squares for smokers.
A Toronto-based scientist is fanning the flames with new research that demonstrates the serious health risks outdoor smoking presents. The exposure of serving staff and fellow diners to nearby puffers is significant, several new studies point out, particularly if the smoker is situated at a table fewer than nine metres away—like on a restaurant patio, for example.
The risk is cumulative, with the smoker’s exhaled arsenic, ammonia and hydrogen cyanide kind of hovering in the air, accumulating with each puff. And the assumption that an outdoor environment is protective for the way the wind disperses smoke assumes, obviously, that it’s blowing the stuff in unpopulated directions.
One study, conducted by Stanford University researchers in 2007, found that the smoke-particle concentrations in the air hanging above an outdoor patio over the cocktail and dinner hours rivaled those produced indoors. Another, which studied the air quality of 25 Toronto patios in 2009, declared the particulates in smoke to which bar workers are exposed over the course of an eight-hour shift to be enough to produce sustained vascular injury.
Cough, cough.
Darcy
on Tue, 08/10/2010 - 10:46
Anonymous
on Tue, 08/10/2010 - 11:07
Am a non-smoker but believe that we should give the smokers an area that is properly vented and let them smoke. They are humans too!!!
I get more upset that nothing is done regarding the drinkers that interfere with a social night out! No matter where you go, there is someone there who is drinking too excess & is loud & obnoxious and your evening is ruined by them. So we frequently come home early!! Maybe it's time we all learned to live together and accept others differences!!! Don't like what they do, then move away!
Darcy
on Tue, 08/10/2010 - 12:53
Of course smokers should, and do, get all of the rights the rest of us do, just not with a cigarette in hand. My choice to sit comfortably on a patio is taken away by cigarette smoke - is the smoker's choice taken away because I'm not smoking a cigarette? It's not intolerance or non-acceptance of a person with differences, as you've said, Anonymous, when you did stay on topic. Smokers, smoke all you want - just not somewhere where it compromises the health, comfort, and enjoyment of others. The studies cited in the article show that on patios, cigarette smoke compromises the health of others.
