The damaging effects of passive smoking on the heart are at least as important as its link with lung cancer, a leading US expert has said.
Dr Katharine Hammond, professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, was speaking at the beginning of a visit to the Republic organised by the Western Health Board and NUI Galway.
An occupational hygienist, she is a world expert on passive smoking in the workplace.
"Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) increases heart disease by 20 to 30 per cent," she said, citing research which shows that ETS damages the lining of vessels supplying the heart as well as interfering with the function of platelets (a component of blood involved in clotting). "It looks like small amounts of exposure to ETS are enough to trigger these cardiac effects and it explains why repeated one hour exposures are really important and significantly increase your risk of heart disease," she said.
"In my own research into ETS, I was able to show that the concentration of smoke particles in open plan offices was 10 times that found in the home. When nicotine concentrations were measured in restaurants and bars, they were found to be up to 10 times greater again," she said of a Massachusetts based study which complements more recent work carried out here by Mr Maurice Mulcahy, senior environmental health officer with the Western Health Board.
Asked about the effects of a 1998 workplace ban on smoking in California, which included a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, Prof Hammond said there was a sense of catastrophe leading up to the ban, but that this did not materialise. "Health inspectors in California reported a 90 to 92 per cent compliance with the law, rising to 98 per cent within a few years. Concerns about throwing people out of pubs and drunken brawls were unfounded," she said.
After working with staff of the Western Health Board today, Prof Hammond will give a public lecture on "the health benefits of going smoke free" in the Arts Millennium Building of NUIG on Wednesday at 8 p.m.
In the lecture she will discuss the broad range of health effects associated with ETS exposure, with a particular emphasis on the additional toxicity of side stream smoke (smoke produced by smouldering cigarettes).
A ban on smoking in the workplace is now expected to come into force in late March or early April.