Authors: Joanne Grimley, Dr David S. Evans, Maurice Mulcahy, Gary McFarlane, Dr Gillian Gilmore
Publication Date: 1st April 2010
Air quality in Northern Ireland has dramatically improved since the introduction of the smokefree workplace legislation, research by the CIEH in Northern Ireland shows.
The study, conducted by the CIEH with the University of Ulster, The Health Service Executive and the Public Health Agency shows that air quality in bars in Northern Ireland is 93 percent cleaner following the smoking ban, showing the clear health benefits to staff and customers.
In the study, the first of its kind in Northern Ireland, air particulates including nicotine were measured in over 80 bars across Northern Ireland both before and after two months after the introduction of the legislation. The research was designed and equipped with the assistance of experts from the Health Service Executive in Galway as well as Berkeley University and Roswell Park Cancer Centre in the US.
The report makes two recommendations for the future. The first advocates that a programme of indoor air particulate monitoring should be developed in Northern Ireland. This should include the setting of standards to minimise exposure to air particulates in the workplace. Workplaces that are not classified as good or moderate in terms of the US EPA Air Quality Index (EPA, 2003) should be investigated to identify the source of PM2.5 pollution and develop interventions to eliminate them.
Secondly, the report suggests that in the future there is a need to investigate whether there is scope in the future to modify existing legislation to provide more effective control on smoking outside premises. This is based on the fact that the scientific evidence confirms that there is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke and yet this research indicated that after the introduction of the legislation, although there were significant improvements in indoor air quality, there was, nonetheless, still a degree of contamination in some premises which, from observations, is most likely to have arisen as a result of the positioning of outside smoking facilities.
The report can be downloaded here.
CIEH’s press release can be downloaded here.