Tobacco Education Center

OCT 30, 1997, M2 Communications - In today's issue of the international journal Tobacco Control, researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that working teens and food service workers are less likely than other Americans to report working in a "smoke-free" workplace. The study, the largest of its kind, is based on interviews with more than 100,000 workers.

Food service workers, including wait staff, cooks, bartenders and counter help, were the least protected of any occupational group with only 21 percent reporting working in a smoke-free work environment. In contrast, 81 percent of persons in health-diagnosing occupations reported such protection. Of all other U.S. workers, nearly half said that their work environment was smoke-free. A smoke-free workplace was defined as one which has an official policy prohibiting smoking in public and work areas.

Previous studies have shown that food service workers have a 50 percent higher risk of lung cancer than the general population. Researchers have attributed this risk to exposure to high levels of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), which are nearly two times higher in restaurants than in office work environments.

Among working teens, only 32 percent reported that their place of employment was smoke-free. This was the lowest rate of protection for any age group.

Since the mid-1980s a series of authoritative reports by the U.S. Surgeon General, the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have all concluded that ETS can cause lung cancer and other serious diseases among nonsmokers. In 1994, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed workplace smoking rules that would prohibit smoking in most worksites. But the proposal has never been implemented.

According to Donald Shopland, coordinator of NCI's Smoking and Tobacco Control Program and one of the authors of the report, "Almost 58 million indoor workers, including 40.4 million who are nonsmokers, are not protected by a smoke-free workplace policy."

The NCI supports the American Stop Smoking Intervention Study (ASSIST) in 17 states, which advocates for protection from secondhand smoke in worksites and other public places. The study is the most comprehensive survey of workplace smoking rules ever attempted. It is based on interviews with workers themselves, while previous studies assessing workplace smoking policies were based on responses from worksite managers or owners who responded for the entire business or company. Data were collected between 1992 and 1993 in a household survey of more than 100,000 workers. The Current Population Survey, designed to obtain labor force indicators for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, has been conducted monthly since 1947. But this was the first time information on worksite smoking policies was collected.

Other findings of the study:

A smaller proportion of men (39.7 percent) than women (51.0 percent) were covered by smoke-free policies.

White collar workers (53.7 percent) were more likely to be covered by a smoke-free policy than service workers (34.8 percent) and blue collar workers (27.4 percent).

Among ethnic groups, Black (36.4 percent) and Hispanic (38.9 percent) males report the lowest prevalence of smoke-free worksites and Asian/Pacific Islander women the highest (57.2 percent).

Fewer than a third (32.1 percent) of workers age 15 to 19 are protected by a smoke-free workplace policy, compared to 46.0 percent of all workers nationally.

"Compared with the 3 percent of workers nationally who reported a 'no smoking' policy in 1986, the results [from this study] demonstrated a notable improvement," said co-author Karen Gerlach, now at CDC's Office on Smoking and Health. "But we still have a long way to go to provide all workers with equal protection."

The study, titled "Workplace smoking policies in the United States: results from a national survey of more than 100,000 workers," was published in Tobacco Control, 1997;6:199-206. The authors are Karen K. Gerlach, Donald R. Shopland, Anne M. Harman, James T. Gibson and Terry F. Pechacek