Tobacco Scam: Smokefree Restaurants: Ventilation Hoax

What should restaurant owners keep in mind when approached by Big Tobacco's ventilation "consultants"?

1. Ventilation is a political ploy by the tobacco industry to block smokefree measures and shift costs and liabilities to the hospitality industry.

2. Ventilation systems costing tens of thousands of dollars may reduce odor, but fail to guard against secondhand smoke's health dangers.

3. Owners who shell out for ventilation systems and other remodels may feel they must now fight smokefree measures to justify their spending.

4. If ventilation "consultants" admitted that going 100% smokefree is simpler, healthier, reduces legal exposure, pares operating costs, and keeps your business growing — could they sell you a system?

The most effective, simplest solution is simply to end smoking. Doing so cut cancer - and heart-disease causing air pollution in restaurants, bars and casinos in Delaware by an astounding 95%.

Ventilation sales pitch is thin air...

What really works? Listen to ASHRAE, the professional engineering authority that designs building standards:

[T]he only means of effectively eliminating health risks associated with indoor exposure is to ban smoking activity…

No other engineering approaches, including current and advanced dilution ventilation or air cleaning technologies, have demonstrated or should be relied upon to control health risks from ETS [environmental tobacco smoke, another term for secondhand smoke] exposure in spaces where smoking occurs…

Because of ASHRAE's mission to act for the benefit of the public, it encourages elimination of smoking in the indoor environment as the optimal way to minimize ETS exposure.

— American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), June 2005

Why would Big Tobacco push ventilation instead? Smokefree measures reduce cigarette consumption. Smokefree public places and workplaces make it easier for smokers to cut down or quit, so Big Tobacco loses billions in annual sales revenue. That's why Big Tobacco's battles smokefree measures — their business, not yours.

The cynicism is breath-taking. But recall what we're dealing with: an industry that brazenly lied to the American people for most of a century about the addictiveness of nicotine and the lethality of smoking. They figure the rest of us must be stupid.

The truth is, there is no safe level of secondhand smoke. No feasible ventilation system can control the health risk from secondhand smoke. Both Big Tobacco and its HVAC collaborators are extremely careful, in footnotes or small type, to disclaim any health benefits from ventilation.

The only way costly ventilation systems would make any economic sense is if they helped restaurants keep business they would otherwise lose. But this is another Big Tobacco myth. Independent, peer-reviewed economic studies based on "hard measures" such as sales tax data show there's no business risk to going smokefree. In fact, there may be a slight benefit. And operating costs due to smoking — maintenance, insurance, labor — drop after cost-free smokefree measures are enacted.

At the end of the day, what are Big Tobacco and their HVAC shills really selling? Contaminated air. You're too smart to buy it.