Health improves in smokefree environments

When smokefree policies or laws are enacted, the health of employees and the public improves. Here are some of the scientific studies:

Bartenders reported improved respiratory health and had improved lung function within only two months of the implementation of the San Francisco law that made bars smokefree. The study was in the December 9, 1998 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In Helena, Montana there was a 40% reduction in heart attacks during the six months the local smokefree air law was in place; rates went up again when the law was suspended. That was reported in a study in the British Medical Journal in 2004.

In New York State, hospitality workers showed a significant decrease in tobacco by-products in their saliva, and other health improvements, after the New York smokefree law made their workplaces smokefree. That study was published in the prestigious international journal Tobacco Control, in 2005.

Pueblo, Colorado had a 27 percent reduction in heart attacks after passing its smokefree air law, according to the American Heart Association, New Jersey, in a November, 2006 news release.

In Scotland, nonsmoking bar workers, including some with asthma, showed health improvements following the March 2006 implementation of Scotland's smokefree air legislation. Researchers at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, Dundee, measured respiratory and sensory symptoms, lung function, tobacco by-products in the blood of workers, and other indicators. The study was reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, October 11, 2006.

This page updated November 9, 2006