
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 28, 1993                   TAG: 9307280174
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Short

SMOKE RISK FOR RESTAURANT WORKERS CITED

Waiters and bartenders breathe up to six times more secondhand tobacco smoke than office employees and are 1 1/2 times as likely to develop lung cancer than the public, a researcher says.

Restaurant workers breathe lingering tobacco smoke for long periods, and for them, "it's really a life and death issue," Dr. Michael Siegel said by telephone from Atlanta, where he has been working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

His report, conducted while he was a resident at the University of California at Berkeley, appears in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Siegel analyzed about 40 studies on indoor air quality published from 1980 through 1992. He said they showed that levels of secondhand smoke in restaurants were 1.6 to two times higher than in offices, and 1.5 times higher than in homes with at least one smoker.

by CNB