Coy

Many thanks for the reference; I did search for some information but did not find the paper to which you refer.

LB

The main "good reason" for having a permissive e-cig policy is that it is more likely to persuade hardened smokers in your organisation to switch, this will almost certainly save people from an early & painful death. It is probably the most effective H&S policy you could implement in terms of effort required v lives saved.

A good summary of the risks of overly restricting e-cigs has been written by Clive Bates ( ex ASH director ) - http://www.clivebates.com/?p=2257#more-2257. It is aimed at the public health community, but there are many parallels for those of us who have an employee well-being remit within our roles

On the basis of that argument, what's your employer's view on the use of mobile phones?

I remember when asbestos-containing materials were "essential work equipment"..............

Ron, interestingly I don't know as far as my current employer's concerned, except that they have a no mobile while mobile policy; I havent' been here long enough to ask about personal mobile use in general. However, I can tell you that my previous employer did not allow personal mobile use for peple on duty (residential care & hospices) except at times of family crisis etc,

John

"The only benefit of vaping is to satisfy a craving for a substance which to me appears to have no effect other than to produce a craving.... "

Really?

I'm truly disappointed by the many closed minds on display in this topic. As someone who smoked twenty plus a day for over forty years - and has now avoided fags for six months without difficulty thanks entirely to the vaper....

For me, it has been the magic bullet that has killed the habit. All previous attempts at habit breaking over thirty-plus years - failures.

And whilst it may be too late to give me significant benefit in terms of expected longevity the benefit in pocket has been much welcomed by the wife and weans. I recommend to all smokers.

I agree to a certain extent, however times do change, I have worked for organisations that have ran campaigns to improve the lifestyle and health of their employees ( Men's health awareness, inviting NHS stop smoking services in, subsidised local gym membership etc. ). So it is clear that educating and persuading employees to live a healthier lifestyle in their private lives is a reasonable thing for an employer to do.

"but I see no reason to allow the use of e-cigs at work in any way that is different to the use of other tobacco products" - e-cigs ARE NOT a tobacco product, no tobacco is present and no combustion occurs, e-cigs are no more a tobacco product than patches, gum, tomatoes or potatoes.

To summarise, I would advise the following e-cig actions for company's

- Adopt a policy for e-cigs that is more permissive than your policy for real cigarettes, this would be proportionate to the risks present and provide a motive for the hardened smoker to switch
- Develop a body of knowledge so the daily mail & vested interest scare stories can be countered, so as to minimise the risk of hardened smokers being put off switching due to a distorted perception of the risks involved.

Would you class nicotine patches, gum or a medicalised version of an e-cig as a tobacco product? , Nicotine is a very small component of tobacco ( and one of the least harmful components ) there are many other plants and foodstuffs that contain nicotine but they do not contain any tobacco. The key criteria of what should be classed as a tobacco product is whether it contains tobacco or not, for e-cigs the answer is a definite NOT.

I believe that it is reasonable for an employer to try to educate & persuade their employees to adopt a healthier lifestyle. Hardened smokers switching to vaping is a winner for both the employee involved and the employer, all at little cost in terms of effort & money.

Again
As with other posts
Here is some good research review material.
http://www.dkfz.de/en/pr...ol19-E-Cigarettes-EN.pdf

Ian

I think a few people are missing the point here...

Whilst there's still no conclusive evidence on the long term health effects of e-cigs, the reports i've personally read all seem to agree that they are considerably less damaging to health than real cigarettes.

However, the argument isn't about e-cigs vs cigarettes (or nicotine patches, gums, inhalers etc) it is purely about whether e-cigs should be allowed in the workplace given that, unlike other forms of nicotine replacement, they give off a vapour which can then be inhaled by people around you.

Of course it makes sense for employers to encourage and help smokers to switch to e-cigs, as they are quite clearly the lesser of the two evils. However, by allowing them to be used in the workplace (by which i mean sitting at your desk with one) you would then be exposing non-smokers/vapers to inhale this vapour which, whilst not as damaging as "proper" cigarette smoke, may (only MAY) be harmful to health.

Ultimately, until e-cigs are proven to be 100% safe, i can't see how any employer can allow them to be used in the workplace except is designated "e-cig areas".

I am an ex smoker following a heart attack last October (psychologically the heart attack was the best deterrent I could have had as it concentrates the mind on just how smoking can wreck lives - fortunately I am now half way through training for a half marathon and have not felt so fit in 20 years).

Having tried e-cigs to give up prior to the attack all I can say is they didn't work for me. My employer does not ban them but politely asks users to go outside to the designated smoking area which in my view rather defeats the object. But you can't have it always.

Sensible policies and procedures are called for and I rather like steve e ashton #60 answer.

Rich

Rich know how you feel had a heart attack last August, although I was fit and healthy and hadn't smoked for over 20 years, trained daily, triathlons, half marathons etc. and contuary to belief it was the fact that I was so fit that kept me alive. So keep working towards your goal of the half marathon (great feeling when you finish if you haven't done one before.

I have a manager who smokes so I go home early everyday because I save up the minutes throughout the day that he and a collegue go outside to smoke.

We do not allow the smoking of e-cigs in buildings but they can go outside for a smoke if they want.

Rich I was the opposite I was running thought I had indigestion so just speeded up the treadmill, I was lucky because I had intended to run through the woods but couldn't be bothered.

Anyway back to e-cigs the reason we allow them outside is that it hasn't been proved what damge can be done by them to the user or others and it took years for it to be realised that passive smoke also contributed to a lot of the damage in none smokers.

Nobody is suggesting that anything which is not 100% safe should be banned.

The fact of the matter is that things like tea, coffee, bananas, mint humbugs and perfumes have been used by mankind for hundreds of years so any potential side effects/health issues would have been observed by now. If you read into e-cigs then you'll see that one of the primary issues is that the experts (doctors, scientists, health agencies etc) have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA of the long term health effects of the "smoking" or passive "smoking" of them because they just haven't been around for long enough.

How long did it take for the health effects of asbestos to be discovered? Or the effects smoking itself? The world thought these things were great at the time (doctors prescribed fags for gods sakle!) until people started dying in their thousands 20-30yrs later. With so much uncertainty and debate around ecigs and their long term health effects, any employer allowing them to be freely "smoked" around the workplace would in my eyes be grossly irresponsible.

I would have thought that restricting their use to designated areas would be a sensible control measure so that people who want to use them can do so but not in such a way that it affects others around them. (See - there is a middle ground between uncontrolled use and a 100% ban!)

Ref your list of examples, other than the deodorant (and maybe perfume) they're all very poor choices to support your argument as these things are not able to be "inhaled" by the person sitting next to you in the same way as nicotine vapour is. If i am sucking on a boiled sweet then this is not affecting the health of the person next to me. The same can be said if i am eating a banana, or drinking a cup of tea. However, if i am "smoking" an ecig and creating a cloud of vapour around me (containing chemicals) then this IS going to affect those around me as this will be entering their body with (as i mentioned earlier) currently unknown long term consequences.

Another link on the BBC news today relating to a man being killed in Merseyside when an e-cigarette exploded. Doesn't eactly fill me with confidence that they are a safe product to use in the workplace (or anywhere for that matter)? Although there do appear to be a number of contributing factors in this case http://www.bbc.co.uk/new...land-merseyside-28701515

Anyone have a link to WHO source document for statement being quoted by BBC and others?

Here you are - http://www.who.int/nmh/e...rounder-e-cigarettes/en/

As this is going on I feel that I have to send the question back to the originator of the thread.
What do you mean by ‘a robust Health and Safety case’?
If you want someone to say that there is clear irrefutable evidence that these things cause disease and that they can be seen as a workplace hazard then the answer; no, there is no ‘robust case’.
If you are asking is there any clear irrefutable evidence that they cause no harm, again there is nothing like that. All we have is possibilities and likelihoods.
So it is really down to you and your employers to decide what they want to do:
They could adopt the precautionary principle and ban the things on the grounds that they might cause harm and that they make it difficult to police the smoking ban.
Equally you could argue that they are not illegal and there is no positive evidence that they cause harm and some people say that they might wean people off real cigarettes. So you might decide to allow their use.
The decision is currently entirely down to you.
It’s one of those decisions that makes the job so interesting and makes you appreciate that you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

SOME academics.

But the real reason why this does not contradict the WHO is that the work by these academics relates to the choice between smoking real cigarettes and smoking e-cigarettes. That's not the choice in the workplace.

I don't think anyone doubts that if you had to choose between cigarette smoke and e-cig fume, the e-cig fume is almost certainly safer. However, the decision in the workplace is not between those two - it's between e-cig fume and no e-cig fume. No-one, by banning use of e-cigs in the workplace, then allows or permits cigarette smoke there. This is a false dichotomy.