18 May 2004 - Passive Smoking Kills One Hospitality Worker Per Week
The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has called for a complete ban on tobacco smoking in restaurants, pubs and bars, following new figures that show passive smoking kills one hospitality industry worker every week.
Professor Konrad Jamrozik of Imperial College in London has calculated the figures and presented them at a recent RCP conference called “Environmental Tobacco Smoke and the Hospitality Industry”. The figures were calculated from the numbers of employees in the hospitality industry, their exposure to tobacco smoke and their likely risk of dying as a result.
Passive smoking at work is estimated by Professor Jamrozik to cause 49 deaths each year in hospitality industry employees – twice as many as from domestic exposure in this group. He also estimates that environmental tobacco smoke in the workplace generally causes about 700 deaths each year in the UK.
The RCP has backing by all the Royal Colleges of Medicine and the support of the Royal College of Nursing for comprehensive smoke free policies.
