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WHO urges ban on smoking in public buildings
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 29 - 05 - 2007


The U.N. health agency on Tuesday issued its
strongest policy recommendations yet for controlling
tobacco use, urging all countries to ban smoking at indoor
workplaces and in public buildings, REPORTED AP.
«The evidence is clear. There is no safe level of
exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke,» said Dr. Margaret
Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization.
Governments should immediately pass laws «requiring all
indoor workplaces and public places to be 100 percent
smoke-free,» she said.
Tobacco use is the world's leading cause of preventable
death, accounting for 10 percent of adult fatalities,
according to WHO. It is responsible for 5.4 million deaths
each year, a figure that is expected to rise to 8.3 million
by 2030, the agency says.
Increasing numbers of nonsmokers will also die unless
governments take action, WHO said in its 50-page report. It
said governments of both rich and poor countries should
declare all public indoor places smoke-free, by passing
laws and actively enforcing measures to ensure that
«everyone has a right to breathe clean air, free from
tobacco smoke.»
At least 200,000 workers die each year because of exposure
to smoke at their offices and factories, according to the
U.N. labor agency. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
estimates that about 3,000 deaths from lung cancer each
year occur among nonsmoking Americans.
«This is not about shaming the smoker. This is not even
about banning smoking,» said Dr. Armando Peruga, who heads
WHO's anti-tobacco campaign. «This is about society taking
decisions about where to smoke and where not to smoke.»
Peruga told reporters at the WHO's Geneva headquarters
that the new policy recommendations were made on the basis
of «indisputable» scientific evidence that secondhand
smoke kills. Exposure causes heart disease and many serious
respiratory and cardiovascular diseases that can lead to
premature death.
He cited Ireland and Uruguay as governments that have
successfully tackled smoking by creating and enforcing
smoke-free environments. Legislation of the kind has proved
popular among both smokers and nonsmokers, according to
WHO, whose policy recommendations set broad goals for its
193 member states but are not legally binding.
Almost half the world's children _ some 700 million _ are
exposed to air polluted by tobacco smoke, particularly at
home, WHO says. The agency made its recommendations on the
basis of new reports by the International Agency for
Research on Cancer, the U.S. Surgeon General and the
California Environmental Protection Agency.
WHO said in 2005 that it had stopped hiring smokers, as
part of what it termed its «public lead» in the fight
against tobacco.


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