Posted By Stuart Nagle
Tania.
Interesting topic.
How does this sit with the fact that clients homes are it appears excluded from being a workplace (domestic property) and therefore apparently not subject to the regulations?
If this view is taken, the place of work (the domestic residence) would in essence be similar to say entering a pub in the evening and being exposed to passive smoking !!
I take it that if your staff frequent pubs/clubs or similar venues outside work and they regard this form of passive smoking as an acceptable risk, whereas in a workplace they may not!!
I have often put the passive smoking question alongside that of fumes from vehicle exhausts. Many people who have expressed 'discomfort' with passive smoking are quite happy to stand at bus stops in busy urban areas and suck in poison fumes at very high levels with no comment or passing thought.
I once asked this question...'who would you rather be locked in a garage with?' 'a smoker or a car with the engine running?' the usual response has been alarmed silence and not knowing what to reply...
The weight of 'evidence' that passive smoking is a danger is derived mainly, so it appears, that some people who smoke die from infections that are attributable to smoking, cancers etc, and that 'studies' 'suggest' that therefore passive smoking must be bad for you. I have never seen a study that shows what the concentractions of pasive smoke are or an analysis of what level of tar or other 'dangerous' toxins passive smoking is supposed to expose you to? It is however a fact that smokers are in rapid decline - only approximately 10% of the population in the UK now smoke (government figures), but that many more people are dying of cancer now than ever before, and amongst those the majority of cancer sufferers have never smoked. Also, interestingly the % of cancer suffers amongst smokers has not risen but has fallen as less and less people are smoking, but this also shows that not all persons who smoke die of smoking related diseases, unless of course you include those 70+ year olds who's smoking habit is attributable to diseases that any other 70+ person who has never smoked also contracts!! but may be overlooked in any 'study'.
I suppose the easy answer is to balme smokers and passive smoking for this rise in cancer death rates, but can less smokers be affecting the health of more people?
Smokers of course also bear a heavy burden for their habit, paying say £4.00 for every box of 20 ciggies, of which about £3.50 is tax, which of course, with less and less smokers means that the revenue has to raise taxes by passing the burden onto others, perhaps those staff who go into the pub and buy alcohol and suffer the pasive smoking of those few smokers still alive...not to mention the risk of contracting liver disease and various other unsavoury infections from poorly managed pub-grub and poorly kept beers etc...and the state of those glasses...uurrghh
Having given this tonge in cheek account of matters 'passive', I agree that to non smokers the smell of smoking can be offensive and not nice to have breath in someone elses dicharged smoke, however, we all exhale and breathing in exhaled air is done all the time, thank god it contains at east 17.5% oxygen as on a crowded train we would all die if this were not so !!
hope this cheered you up, even if not answering your question, but you do need to look at the legal position of a domestic property... it is as I understand specifically excluded from the regulations...
best regards...
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