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Hong Kong Food Service Workers Study (2001)

Study Finds Secondhand Smoke Kills 150 Hong Kong Food Service Workers Annually

As many of you know, on May 15, 2001 the Hong Kong Council on Smoking & Health (COSH) released the results of a very significant study which examined the effects of secondhand smoke exposure among food service workers in Hong Kong. The study -- which involved interviews and urine samples to detect cotonine, a marker for secondhand smoke -- estimated that secondhand smoke kills about 150 food service workers annually in Hong Kong. The study found that food service workers had 5 1/2 times more cotonine in their urine than a control group of nonsmokers working in smoke-free settings.

Two articles have been released by COSH based on this study, as follows: one article is by James Repace, titled "Preliminary Analysis of Dose, Exposure, and Risk for 104 Hong Kong Catering Workers Exposed to Second Hand Smoke at Work Only;" and an article by Hedley, McGhee, Repace, et al titled "Second-hand Smoke Exposures and Passive Smoking in Non-Smoking Catering Workers in Hong Kong: the Combined Risks for Heart Disease and Cancer."

The Hong Kong Council on Smoking & Health (COSH) site, at http://www.info.gov.hk/hkcosh, has the texts of the articles. However, we had some trouble getting the full pages of some of these articles to show and print from the COSH site (don't know if others have had that problem or not), so we downloaded them and put them into pdf format and have placed them on the Smoke-Free Environments Law Project (SFELP) site at http://www.tcsg.org/sfelp/home.htm, along with a Hong Kong news article on the study and a link to the COSH site where you can obtain other information about efforts to enact smoke-free laws in Hong Kong. At the SFELP site, to access the articles and info, click on either "Health Effects of ETS" or on "Recent ETS News."

Jim Bergman

Smoke-Free Environments Law Project

The Center for Social Gerontology

Ann Arbor, Michigan

jbergman@tcsg.org

http://www.tcsg.org/sfelp/home.htm

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See the other pages on this subject in the GASP of Colorado's Education Center -

• Bartenders Breathe Easier After Establishment Of Smoke-Free Bars And Taverns
  
• Boulder's Smoke-Free Ordinance Makes Good Cents for Restaurant and Bars
  
• Breathe easy: Going smoke-free can be painless
  
• Customers' Smoke Kills Waiters
  
• Massachusetts Patrons Favor Restaurant Smoking Ban
  
• New York City's Smoke-Free Air Act Has Not Hurt Restaurant Business
  
• Response To The Restaurant Association's Arguments
  
• Restaurant/Bar Smoking Ban Has Not Hurt CA Business
  
• Secondhand Smoke Harms Restaurant Workers
  
• Smoke-Free Air Act Has Not Hurt Restaurant Business
  
• Teen Food Workers at Risk:
  Among working teens, only 32 percent reported that their place of employment was smoke-free. This was the lowest rate of protection for any age group says a study by the National Cancer Institute.
  
• Thirty Reasons to Become a Smoke-Free Restaurant
  
• Tourism Not Hurt by Smoke-Free Laws
  
• Will Marketplace Solve Smoking in Businesses?
  
  
  
  

Working towards creating a safe and healthy workplace free of tobacco smoke.