Report reveals passive smoking kills three people a day

New research has revealed that three people each day die due to passive smoking at work and has prompted renewed calls for laws to ban smoking in workplaces.

According to research in ‘A Killer on the Loose’ published today, on the eve of a major conference on workplace smoking, every year 1,200 people in the UK die as a result of passive smoking.

The TUC, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) conference tomorrow will call on the Government to implement a legally binding Code of Practice for workplace smoking, proposed over two years ago by the Health and Safety Commission.

The research, carried out by expert James Repace, has revealed that in the UK around 900 office workers, 165 bar workers and 145 manufacturing workers die each year as a direct result of breathing in other people's tobacco smoke at work.

These figures indicate that there are three times as many deaths from passive smoking at work as the total number of deaths from workplace injuries.

Previous research has shown that three million people in the UK are exposed to tobacco smoke while at work.

James Repace said: “More people died in 2002 from passive smoking at work in the UK than were killed by the Great London smog of 1952. This study shows that previous research has seriously underestimated the number of people killed by second-hand smoke at work."

Speakers at the ‘Don’t choke on the smoke’ conference will call for the Government to implement an Approved Code of Practice which would clarify how existing health and safety law applies to passive smoking, effectively banning smoking from the vast majority of workplaces.

Organisers say that the UK is lagging behind other countries in this area and lawyers at the conference will warn that employers could face lawsuits if they fail to protect staff from passive smoke.

(SP)