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Next week marks the 15th anniversary of smoke-free domestic airline flights, but frequent fliers may still be getting a dangerous dose of secondhand tobacco smoke.
Most of the USA's large hub airports continue to allow smoking in some areas, says a recent report by private health experts and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most small airports prohibit smoking.
Ron Davis, co-author of the report, says the air inside most large hub airports is unhealthy, putting travelers and workers at elevated risk for cancer and death from secondhand smoke. Public health experts say the smoking lounges available at several airports -- regardless of the type of ventilation system -- don't contain all smoke.
Airport administrators where tobacco use is permitted say smokers need to be accommodated.
That sits well with business travelers who smoke. They say their right to smoke has been trampled on in a growing number of public places, and more airports should designate places for them to light up.
Dean Burri, a cigar smoker in Clearwater, Fla., who owns a health insurance company, says smoking should be allowed ''inside closed, ventilated rooms'' at airports. ''The non-smokers don't have to breathe the smoke, and the smokers have a place to smoke,'' he says.
That logic doesn't work with many non-smoking business travelers who believe secondhand smoke endangers their health. They're calling on airport authorities to ban smoking everywhere inside their facilities.
Bob Johnson, an Orlando-based software instructor for a home-building company, says he quit smoking 20 years ago, and it shouldn't be allowed in airports. ''I have to hold my breath when walking through smoking areas,'' he says.
Many airports allow smoking
A USA TODAY survey shows that smoking is allowed somewhere inside 16 of the 25 busiest U.S. airports. Eight airports -- in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, St. Louis, Salt Lake City and Honolulu -- provide designated lounges for smokers. Some airports, including those in Charlotte and Newark, N.J., allow smoking in bars or restaurants, and a few airports, such as New York's JFK, allow smoking only in some airline clubs.
Public health experts say frequent fliers and airport workers may be among those at the greatest risk from breathing secondhand smoke at airports. ''The higher the cumulative exposure,'' says Davis, ''the more likely that DNA will be damaged, and the more likely that a tumor will develop.''
A lit cigarette emits 250 toxic compounds, including more than 60 carcinogens, says co-author Terry Pechacek, an associate director at CDC. Davis and Pechacek warn that even a single exposure to secondhand smoke can be harmful.
The public health experts' findings aren't budging operators of the 16 big airports where smoking is permitted. Officials at several of them say their smoking lounges contain all the smoke and vent it to the outside.
The busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, has 11 smoking lounges without doors that were constructed by tobacco company Philip Morris and designed to keep smoke from escaping into non-smoking areas. Mario Diaz, the airport's deputy general manager, says connecting passengers don't have enough time between flights to go outside to smoke. ''We believe we have struck a balance'' for smokers and non-smokers, he says.
Lambert-St. Louis has nine smoking rooms, each with ''floor-to-ceiling walls'' and a ventilation system that prevents air from recirculating through the airport, says spokesman Michael Donatt. He declined comment about a research paper published last year in a public health journal that found ''elevated levels'' of nicotine vapor in a non-smoking area next to a smoking room at the St. Louis airport.
Some airports without lounges -- such as Charlotte, Baltimore/Washington and Newark -- allow smoking in bars or restaurants.
Smoking at airline clubs
Big airlines often permit smoking in their clubs at foreign destinations and at a few U.S. airports. For example, Northwest allows smoking at its clubs in Detroit and Minneapolis, United at O'Hare and American at O'Hare and Dallas/Fort Worth.
American spokesman Tim Wagner says the airline closed some smoking facilities in cities that adopted indoor bans, but no city laws prohibit smoking at O'Hare and DFW.
United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski says its smoking lounge is in one of four club rooms at O'Hare, and the airline will decide whether to continue to allow smoking when renovations are made next month. Northwest declined to comment.
Harry Parker, a cigarette smoker who is a software consultant in Tulsa, says he prefers to travel in the South and Southeast, where he's more likely to find airport smoking rooms. More airports should build the rooms to avoid smokers clustering outside an airport terminal and bothering non-smokers, he says.
Kelli Boucher of Montgomery, N.Y., doesn't agree. ''It is disgusting to walk by rooms for smokers,'' says the software consultant who traveled through airports on about 50 trips by air last year. ''It stinks up the entire area.''
A non-profit organization, Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, says Feb. 25 marks the 15th anniversary of smoke-free domestic flights, and this year is also the fifth anniversary of a law banning smoking on all international flights to and from the USA. It makes no sense, says the group's Bronson Frick, that once fliers step off their flights, ''They're greeted with noxious secondhand smoke'' at airports.
Airports Council International-North America, a trade group, says it does not have a position on smoking within airports. The group supports each airport's right to determine what is best for its customers, says spokeswoman Juliet Wright.
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