Irish employers and trade unions have been told they have a duty to protect non-smokers from the dangers of passive smoking in the workplace. The statement, by a leading member of the anti-smoking group ASH, was made yesterday as new medical evidence was published linking passive smoking with chronic ill-health. The findings from four studies revealed that inhaling a neighbour's smoke substantially increases the risk of lung cancer, heart disease and, in children, asthma and serious chest complaints.
Dr Fenton Howell, a board member of ASH, said that "a lot of the big players are staying surprisingly silent". The employers' organisation IBEC and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) had a duty to "look after the interests of the majority of their workers. Seventy per cent of people do not smoke, and passive smoking is a known health hazard," he said.
It was a "major deficiency here" that employers had the discretion to decide if smoking in the workplace was permitted or banned, he said. "These studies confirm the evidence that we already have but go beyond that by showing that the risk of heart disease is much higher than previously thought."
Last night ICTU defended its record, saying that Congress had been "actively involved" in the no smoking campaign for many years. Mr Oliver Donohoe, ICTU research and information officer, said Congress had always believed the best way to tackle the problem was to "convince people of the damage they are doing by smoking but not to try to beat them into giving it up. We were one of the first organisations to ban smoking at our annual conference".
Two papers from the same London team published in the British Medical Journal said that passive smoking raised a non-smoker's risk of lung cancer by 26 per cent and of heart disease by 23 per cent. A third study, by St George's Hospital, London, published in the British Thoracic Society journal Thorax, said babies had a 72 per cent increased risk of acute chest diseases if their mothers smoked.
In the US, an Environmental Protection Agency of California report linked passive smoking to cot death, illness and death from heart disease, nasal cancer and the triggering of asthma in children.
Dr Luke Clancy, chairman of ASH and a consultant respiratory physician at St Luke's Hospital, said that more studies of the effects of passive smoking were now needed to show clinical significance.
In Dublin yesterday two mothers began landmark actions in the High Court claiming they had incurred serious illnesses as a result of heavy smoking over the past three decades.