Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 2, 1994 TAG: 9411120005
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANK SWOBODA AND MARTHA M. HAMILTON THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
For Holden's cops, the emphasis on health has paid off. Annual average sick leave has been cut in half, and stress-related retirements have become a thing of the past. ``We're feeling better about ourselves and looking better in uniform,'' says Sgt. George R. Sherrill.
Workplace smoking may be on its last gasp everywhere else, if the regulators are successful. But this new battle over smoking promises to be painful for a nation where tobacco once was so pervasive that granite tobacco leaves are actually entwined around the columns of the U.S. Capitol.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, has opened hearings on a proposal that amounts to a virtual ban on smoking in every workplace in the nation - in factories and offices, in bars and restaurants, in indoor sports arenas and catered wedding receptions - anywhere people work. It adds up to 92 million workers at 6 million workplaces.
Critics charge that it amounts to a kind of backdoor regulation of public behavior. Because OSHA reaches into any place where someone works, federal authorities are able to use the workplace health law to implement a broad public policy that, in effect, outlaws smoking in public accommodations.
``The OSHA rule-making, as proposed, is virtually a national smoking ban,'' says Brennan Dawson, spokeswoman for the Tobacco Institute, the trade association for the industry. ``They're reaching into very private places where people otherwise think the government shouldn't reach.''
``It's not a ban,'' insists Joe Dear, the assistant secretary of labor in charge of OSHA. ``It just says that workers' health should be protected from exposure to environmental smoke.''
The Holden police department is one of a growing number of employers that have banned smoking because of public concerns about smoking and health. Even the U.S. Army is now smoke-free.
The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 85 percent of businesses had adopted some form of smoking controls by 1991, up from 36 percent five years earlier.
For employers, smoking is a cost issue. It's estimated that employers pay an average of an extra $1,000 a year for every employee who smokes, according to the National Cancer Institute. Smoking also takes its toll on productivity, because smokers are absent from work 50 percent more often than nonsmokers, have twice as many on-the-job accidents and are 50 percent more likely to be hospitalized than workers who do not smoke, the cancer institute said.
More than 40 states and the District of Columbia already have enacted some form of legislation to restrict smoking in public. At least 11 states have restricted smoking in the workplace.
The OSHA smoking proposal is as simple as it is broad. The government is proposing that all employers either ban smoking or provide a designated smoking area that is enclosed and ventilated directly to the outside. It is the first time in OSHA's 24-year history that the agency is proposing to require zero exposure to a hazardous substance in the workplace.
The smoking regulation is part of a government proposal to deal with overall air quality in the workplace, the so-called ``sick building syndrome.'' Annual cost estimates for employers range from ``zero'' to deal with smoking if they simply ban it, to $8 billion for compliance with the overall indoor air regulations. The indoor air quality standards would not apply to industrial sites, but smoking regulations would apply to all workplaces.
The OSHA proposal would require employers and building owners to control the variety of chemicals and solvents present in the nonindustrial work sites that health officials cite as the cause of illnesses ranging from runny noses to Legionnaires' disease.
Restaurants, bars and other public accommodations would be able to comply with the law by providing segregated smoking sections - provided they filtered the air rapidly enough to protect employees assigned to those facilities. A number of health and safety experts said they believed the cost of compliance would be so high that the real result will be a ban on smoking.
by CNB