Esteemed Council:
Anti-smokers say no equipment can totally protect a person from the harmful contaminants in cigarette smoke. But there is equipment and technology that can provide cleaner air than we breathe outside. Environmental tobacco smoke is 100,000 times more dilute than mainstream smoke the smoker inhales; so dilute that only 20 compounds have even been identified.
The quantities of these compounds, even in �high concentrations,� are infinitesimally small, and even in the absence of ventilation, the exposure to such low concentrations requires thousands of smoking hours to reach an accumulation that would exceed ASHRAE or OSHA standards. ASHRAE, by the way, has made available for public comment, its reclassification of secondary smoke to Class 2, a lower hazard than it thought previously. They also state dilution in accordance with the standard for indoor air quality can bring that classification up to Class 1, which is harmless.
The recent study by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, using actual monitoring devices, instead of estimates as were provided before, shows a worker in a smoker-friendly establishment inhales the equivalent of 6 cigarettes per year. If 6 cigarettes per year is too much, perhaps that worker should go elsewhere where smoking is not allowed.
Antis are quick to jump on the Honeywell Air Wall positive/negative pressure system by saying that Honeywell does not guarantee its health benefits. Think about that. Why would Honeywell guarantee health benefits at all; Honeywell is not in the health care business, and that would leave them open for lawsuits, whether justified or not. I don't blame them at all for not guaranteeing anything in the current litigious climate. That does not mean, however, that the Honeywell system does not make the air cleaner than it was before any smoking occurred. Or do the anti-smokers want the air even cleaner than it was? It certainly seems so.
Anti-smokers say there is no safe level of secondary smoke, but no danger level has ever been decided, either. There are threshold limit values on every kind of contaminant from mercury to chlorine to carbon monoxide, but those limit values have not been established for cigarette smoke. Even radiation has a threshold limit below which it isn't dangerous. Could that be because the anti-smokers want to be able to say there is no safe level? If you believe there is no safe level of environmental tobacco smoke to the extent that you'd deprive people of their livelihood, you'd better stay inside because sunshine is also listed by the NTC as a Class A carcinogen. No safe level, indeed.
Please. Open your eyes and your minds and use your common sense. It does NOT take tornado-force winds to clear smoke from a room as stated by anti-smoker crusader James Repace; it does NOT take two weeks for smoke to leave an area; shs will NOT kill you if you can smell it, as John Banzhaf says. These things are simply over-emotional soundbytes directed to people who want an excuse to get rid of smoking.