Thank you for sending me the March issue of Indoor Air Review. I appreciate your invaluable work of informing your readers on point, including on tobacco smoking conduct (TSC).
"The failure of federal and state government to address indoor air quality has left much of the policing of the industry to voluntary standards organizations." |
We are all used to "speed limits." Cigarettes emit deleterious emissions that exceed the "speed limits" (official term: "Threshold Limit Value," TLV) for toxic chemicals in the air. These toxic emissions are due to cigarettes' inherently deleterious nature, emissions, and ingredients. The U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (DHEW), Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, PHS Pub 1103, Table 4, p 60 (1964), lists examples of deleterious emissions (citing the numbers above the chemicals' 29 CFR § 1910.1000 "speed limts") including but not limited to:
Cigarette Chemical | Emission Quantity | |
acetaldehyde | 3,200 ppm | 200.0 ppm |
acrolein | 150 ppm | 0.5 ppm |
ammonia | 300 ppm | 150.0 ppm |
carbon monoxide | 42,000 ppm | 100.0 ppm |
formaldehyde | 30 ppm | 5.0 ppm |
hydrogen cyanide | 1,600 ppm | 10.0 ppm |
hydrogen sulfide | 40 ppm | 20.0 ppm |
methyl chloride | 1,200 ppm | 100.0 ppm |
nitrogen dioxide | 250 ppm | 5.0 ppm |
  In this context, it is easier to understand why cigarette emissions are so fatal. The "speed limit" for carbon monoxide is about 100, whereas it's doing 42,000.
All cigarettes contain deleterious ingredients. In fact, medically, cigarettes are inherently dangerous. This fact has received judicial notice in cases such as Banzhaf v F.C.C., 132 US App DC 14, 29; 405 F2d 1082, 1097 (1968) cert den 396 US 842 (1969). The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Reducing the Health Consequences of Smoking: 25 Years of Progress: a Report of the Surgeon General, Publication CDC 89-8411, Table 7, pp 86-87 (1989), lists examples of deleterious ingredients including but not limited to:
acetaldehyde (1.4+ mg) | arsenic (500+ ng) | benzo(a)pyrene (.1+ ng) |
cadmium (1,300+ ng) | crotonaldehyde (.2+ µg) | chromium (1,000+ ng) |
ethylcarbamate 310+ ng) | formaldehyde (1.6+ µg) | hydrazine (14+ ng) |
lead (8+ µg) | nickel (2,000+ ng) | radioactive polonium (.2+ Pci) |
Judicial notice of cigarettes' "inherent" deleteriousness was taken pursuant to an 1897 Tennessee law, in Austin v State, 101 Tenn 563; 566-7; 48 SW 305, 306; 70 Am St Rep 703 (1898) affirmed 179 US 343 (1900). The Michigan law specifying that only safe cigarettes can be manufactured, given away, and sold was passed soon thereafter, in 1909. The legal "right to fresh and pure air" existed long prior and is still being enforced, for example in the Shimp case, the
Hall case, and the Perkins case.
Thomas Edison exposed an aspect of the cigarette hazard in 1914. The cigarettes and cancer connection was published as long ago as 1925. The Michigan House of Representatives received a report on cigarette hazards over a century ago, in 1889.
"Are You Missing $omething?,"
"Smoking as hazardous conduct,"
"Alternative Models for Controlling Smoking Among Adolescents,"
"Don't Hire Smokers: Here Is Why And How Not To Hire Smokers "
Right of Employee to Injunction Preventing Employer
Plant and Job Safety—OSHA and State Laws
Prof. William L. Weis and Bruce W. Miller, Weis, William L., Ph.D., "Profits up in Smoke,"
This site sponsored as a public service by
Please read our tobacco effects webpage.
Copyright © 1999 Leroy J. Pletten
26 Smoke Signals 4 (Oct 1980)
(discusses cigarette costs to society, following my practice of
consolidating in one narrative, data from a multiplicity of sources,
refuting the then notion that cigarettes are a cost plus to society)
86 N Y St J Med 493 (Sep 1986)
(discusses workplace smoking as already illegal
pursuant to OSHA's
29 CFR § 1910.1000 emissions limits,
which cigarettes regularly exceed)
87 Am J Pub Health 869-870 (May 1997)
(discusses prevention of smoking among children
by doing for them as for all other people:
a law providing that only safe products
be manufactured, given away, and sold)
(cites precedents on the legal duty to not commit
personnel negligence/malpractice by hiring dangerous people:
obviously violated when smokers are hired as they are
foreseeably dangerous to themselves, others, and property)
Also Recommended Reading
From Exposing Employee to Tobacco Smoke In Workplace
37 ALR4th 480
61 Am Jur 2d, §§ 1-130
The Smoke-Free Workplace
(Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985),
esp ch 3-7 (costs) and 12 (hiring/transition practices).
60 Personnel J (Issue #3) 162-165 (March 1981)
personnel costs 20%
insurance premiums 30%
maintenance charges 50%
furniture replacement 50%
disability payments 75%
Smokers are ". . . distinguishable by
high rates of absenteeism,
early mortality and
low productivity . . ."
Discussion Group: More Participants Welcome
The Crime Prevention Group.