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Posted By James Fleming
I didn’t want to hijack the other thread on smoking as this has a different slant on it.
For those premises that are exempt i.e. Residential Care homes what are the views on the part of providing a ‘designated room’ and its requirements, specifically to the ventilation part.
My understanding is that there are no ventilation systems, at this time, that take out all the bad parts of smoke and second hand smoke. Therefore, in terms of ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’ it wouldn’t be reasonably practicable or even practicable it light of cost/time/trouble and current technology, bearing in mind that the technology to extract all the nasty bits could be round the corner next year.
I would be interested to hear the views of others who are providing designated areas and what their views are on providing a ventilation system.
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Posted By Descarte
Maybe I am reading wrong but dosnt ventilation work on a dilution effect and not filtering effect, so would remove all parts in the same ratio depending on rate of room turnover etc.?
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Posted By John Webster
Those who support the total ban have also used the inadequacy of ventilation argument. Quite simply, the greater the number of air changes per hour, the lower the concentration of components of the smoke. It is also useless to just have extract fans without providing an equivalent flow of incoming air. The problem is that as you may want, say, >10 changes per hour, unless a heat exchanger is used to recover heat from the outgoing air, the heating bill goes up, so the temptation is to use a recirculating filter system instead. These will remove the particulates - visible smoke - and some, but by no means all of the harmful components. It may be necessary to have care staff in the room to look after them, and you will also want to prevent smoke seeping into other areas and to clear the room before cleaners & maintenance staff come in. So go for properly designed ventilation
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Posted By Adrian Watson
John,
Who says ventilation is indequate? It is only inadequate if there is no threshold for the substance! Ventilation is perfectly adequate in my experience provided that it is discharged to atmosphere. I do not recommend recycling polluted air that cannot be properly cleaned especially when the fresh air supply is closed off to conserve energy or the system is properly maintained.
Regards Adrian Watson
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Posted By John Webster
Adrian
er...is that not what I said? The Scottish Exec. uses the following statement which I find to be extremely misleading, and probably where James gets his reservations from.
"There is no safe level of exposure to second-hand smoke. Ventilation systems improve comfort by removing the smell and visibility of the smoke. They do not remove toxic carcinogens from the air".
Clearly a ventilation system will reduce smell, visibility and "toxic carcinogens" in approximately equal measure. The better the ventilation the lower the risk.
The only way to totally remove components of tobacco smoke from the air is to totally ban smoking, anywhere, worldwide!! Hardly practicable, even within the almighty powers of the SE.
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Posted By J Knight
Hi James,
I have to disagree; I think that it would be reasonably practicable to install a ventilation system; this would not, as you rightly say, eliminate the risk, but is almost a definition of something which would reduce it SFARP. In this case, so far as reasonably practicable is to use the best available air cleaning system as banning smoking in res care homes is not usually considered desirable.
However, you need to take other steps. One important element in smoke risk control (since we are talking COSHH type things here) is to limit exposure by ensuring frequent changes of staff, and also by trying to increase the options for smoking service users in terms of self-help; providing cigarette holders for example.
The Care Standards do explicitly allow for res care homes to have a no smoking policy, and I know that some of our staff would like to trial that here; already one of our Hospices allows no smoking indoors at all,
John
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