High incidence of passive smoking found
Serving staff in bars and restaurants could well be passively smoking the equivalent of up to 38 cigarettes a day, a study has found.
The report, released by the Valais Anti-Smoking Centre, is said to be one of the first of its kind to quantify the effects of inhaling second-hand smoke.
Researchers gave out to the public 1,500 special nicotine-measuring devices in badge form at the beginning of 2007; 630 were given back six months later.
It was found that almost all the badge wearers, aged from three months to 82 years old, were subject to second-hand smoke.
The most badly affected were serving staff – inhaling the equivalent of 15 to 38 cigarettes per day, depending on their place of work. 5.7 per cent were barely affected and the rest were subjected to the equivalent of one to more than ten cigarettes a day.
The results of the study have been published in the Swiss Medical Review.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.