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Recent legislation and court cases concerning smoking in the workplace point to the following:

• Employers have the right to ban smoking in the workplace or to hire only nonsmokers, except where collective bargaining agreements with unions prohibit.
• Employers must take some responsibility for the discomfort, pain and illness caused to employees by those who smoke in the workplace.
• Employees have a common-law right to a smoke-free workplace.
• Most states have enacted legislation governing smoking in public places, and a number of states regulate smoking in the workplace. For a list of these states, visit http://slati.lungusa.org/appendixa.html. In addition, the number of counties and municipalities that regulate workplace smoking is increasing. Some legislation requires employers to establish and publish a workplace smoking policy, while other legislation requires employers to follow specific rules.

Additional laws and regulations include:

The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) www.cdc.gov/niosh/homepage.html requires employers to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards that cause, or are likely to cause, death or serious physical harm to employees. OSHA smoking bans relate to work areas where fire and accidents could result from smoking in particular circumstances. Employers should use OSHA standards as a guide, but also review fire laws, clean air legislation and safety regulations, as well as state and local ordinances to establish a smoking policy and assure compliance.

In addition, as early as 1989, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was recommending that employers either restrict smoking in buildings to separately ventilated areas directly exhausted to the outside or ban smoking entirely to protect nonsmokers from environmental tobacco smoke www.epa.gov.

What's in environmental tobacco smoke?
The EPA study found that environmental tobacco smoke is a mixture of irritating gases and carcinogenic tar particles and is one of the most widespread and harmful air pollutants. Forty-three of the more than 4,700 chemical compounds contained in cigarette smoke are known carcinogens.

Harmful spreading effects.
The EPA study noted that environmental tobacco smoke diffuses rapidly throughout buildings, persists for long periods and represents one of the strongest sources of indoor air pollution where smoking is permitted. Research indicates that total removal of tobacco smoke through ventilation is both technically and economically impractical - although air filters could be effective in removing smoke particles, depending on the type of air filter used. The EPA has concluded that secondhand smoke was a "Group A" human carcinogen - a substance known to cause cancer in humans. There is no safe level of exposure for Group A toxins www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/strsfs.html.