On 5/29/2016 10:25 AM, wrote:
On Sun, 29 May 2016 09:29:52 -0500, Vic Smith
wrote:


We abolished slavery 151 years ago. If the employees don't want to
work around smokers, they can seek employment elsewhere.

Unsafe work place. There you have it.

How is it unsafe? With any reasonable amount of fresh air makeup on
the HVAC system this minuscule amount of smoke is harmless. If the
wait staff is smoking too (and a very high percentage do), what
difference would it make anyway?


Nationally, the US Environmental Protection Agency has found secondhand
smoke to be a risk to public health and has classified secondhand smoke
as a group A carcinogen, *the most dangerous class of carcinogen*.16 A
recent report from the US surgeon general on the health consequences of
involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke concluded that there is no safe
level of exposure to secondhand smoke and neither separating smokers
from nonsmokers nor installing ventilation systems effectively
eliminates secondhand smoke.9

Additional research has focused on how exposure to secondhand smoke
affects individual employees. For example, a major area of research has
focused on biomarkers of secondhand smoke exposure in fluids such as
urine and saliva. Several recent studies have shown that employees’
exposure to secondhand smoke in the workplace causes significant
increases in the uptake of tobacco-specific carcinogens.1–6 In a
national study of nonsmoking workers, exposure to secondhand smoke
varied significantly by occupation.5,18 Higher levels of exposure were
observed in occupational groups that tend to be described as blue collar
or service, such as waiters and bartenders, and lower levels in groups
that tend to be described as white collar (e.g., office workers).5

AND

Workers who are not currently protected by state or local laws that
create smoke-free workplaces nevertheless have legal options available.
For example, an employee could file a workers’ compensation claim
against an employer for illness or injury attributable to exposure to
secondhand smoke on the job. Such claims may increase an employer’s
workers’ compensation premiums, an employee could file a disability
discrimination claim that an employer failed to provide a “reasonable
accommodation”—in this instance protection from exposure to secondhand
smoke—if the worker has a disability (such as asthma) that is
exacerbated by exposure to secondhand smoke, or an employee could file a
claim that the employer failed to provide a safe workplace, based on a
common law duty.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1931463/


--
Maggie