ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 25, 1996 TAG: 9604250080
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Kansas City Star
Your doctor may not be able to get you to quit smoking, but your boss probably can.
A study at the University of Missouri-Columbia has found that a total workplace ban on smoking may be the most effective and cheapest way to get people to give up cigarettes.
``The smoking ban does something very dramatic. It has tremendous health and economic implications,'' said MU researcher Daniel Longo.
Longo's findings, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, show that nearly 51 percent of employees in hospitals where a total smoking ban had been in effect for five years had quit smoking.
Longo compared that with rates of quitting among workers in other businesses, where smoking policies ranged from no ban at all to some restrictions. In those businesses, about 38 percent of the smokers had quit in the same five-year period.
``This points to smoking bans as the most effective as well as the most cost-efficient strategy for quitting smoking in the long run. It does not require expenses like one-to-one intervention with a doctor,'' Longo said.
``And when you add in the impact this has on the families of smokers, you're talking about millions of people benefiting.''
Another smoking study published in the Journal found that 88 percent of nonsmokers in the United States are routinely exposed to secondhand smoke at work, home, public places, social gatherings and other places.
Longo's study is the first large-scale examination of the effectiveness of bans on workplace smoking in getting employees to quit smoking.
He and other researchers surveyed 1,469 employees of 26 hospitals across the country. Hospitals were chosen because they adopted the first industrywide smoking ban.
Longo said workplace smoking bans ought to become a routine public health measure, equivalent to seat belts in cars, helmets for motorcycles and fluoride in drinking water, now that their effectiveness has been demonstrated.
The high quitting rate among smokers can be seen as an unintended bonus of workplace smoking bans. The bans were introduced primarily to protect nonsmoking employees from the health hazards of secondhand smoke.
``What really brought things to the forefront was the Environmental Protection Agency report in 1993 on the [detrimental] health effects of secondhand smoke,'' said Sherri Watson of the American Lung Association in Washington.
Restaurants, particularly those like McDonald's that cater to families and children, shopping malls, offices and schools were among the first to adopt smoking bans or restrictions, she said.
``Now you're beginning to see [restrictions] across the board. It's becoming universal.''
About 83 million workers have some protection from secondhand smoke on the job, while 14 million to 36 million nonsmoking adults are still exposed to it, Watson said.
The study on secondhand smoke was conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It examined blood samples from 10,642 people for chemicals that indicate exposure to tobacco smoke.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 linesby CNB