Tobacco smoke drift at home - Advisory from ASH Scotland

Link: https://www.ashscotland.org.uk/media/4474/Smoke-drift.pdf

Key points:
• exposure to tobacco smoke drift in the home is a serious nuisance and may cause health problems
• the Scottish smoke-free legislation does not cover homes (except where they are also workplaces)
• local authority environmental health officers have a duty to investigate but smoke drift is very resource-intensive to prove
• smoke drift can be reduced but not eliminated
• maintaining good relations with neighbours is the best way of working towards a solution.

Excerpts:
1. ASH Scotland receives many enquiries from non-smokers exposed to indirect smoke drift in their own homes. Parents with young children and those who are housebound are especially vulnerable, and feeling powerless to prevent unwanted exposure in a place where you should feel safe adds an additional stress. Children are more vulnerable to the effects of second-hand smoke than adults because of their smaller size, less developed immune systems and faster breathing rates10. Exposure to smoke from other people’s tobacco in your own home can be as much of an intrusion as persistent loud noise or other anti-social behaviour and deserves to be treated as seriously.

How smoke drifts
2. Smoke can drift wherever there is room for air to move and need not be visible to be a health risk. It can circulate between properties via door and window joinery, through floors and under skirting boards, lighting fixtures, cracks and gaps in walls, along ducts made for pipes and wiring, through mechanical ventilation and air conditioning systems, from landings and stairways, external doorways, balconies and other outdoor spaces.

Health Hazards
3. Inhaling second-hand smoke can cause cancer in non-smokers and many of the cancer-causing chemicals are present in higher concentrations than in the smoke inhaled by the smoker themselves24. Research25 indicates that nonsmokers' heart arteries show a reduced ability to dilate when exposed to tobacco smoke, diminishing the ability of the heart to get blood. In addition, the same half hour of second-hand smoke exposure activates blood platelets, which can initiate the process of atherosclerosis (blockage of the heart's arteries) that can lead to heart attacks. These effects may explain other research showing that non-smokers regularly exposed to SHS suffer death or disease rates 30% higher than those of unexposed non-smokers26.

Fire Hazard
4. Smokers’ materials (i.e. cigarettes, cigars or pipe tobacco) were the most frequent source of ignition causing accidental dwelling fire deaths, accounting for 102 deaths and 1,047 non-fatal casualties, which is over a third of all accidental dwelling fire deaths in the UK in 2007.

Workplace Smoke Drift
5. Workplaces in Scotland are covered by smoke-free legislation. If the smoke drift is entering your home from a workplace then the law is being broken and you should speak first to the management and then to local authority environmental health officers.