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Logan Airport
In Bruce Mohl's Sunday article on Logan
Airport's smoking lounge, John Auerbach of the Health Commission indicated it
made no sense to allow travelers to smoke at the airport after being denied
permission to smoke on long overseas flights. This is the sort of conclusion
that only a dyed-in-the-wool Antismoker could reach: after such long flights of
COURSE smoking travelers would like a comfortable place to smoke before
connecting to other non-smoking flights!
Airport smoking bans make very little sense outside of the social engineering
goal of "de-normalizing" smoking. A cigarette puts off about 70 milligrams of
carbon monoxide. A fully loaded passenger jet on takeoff puts out roughly 100
kilograms of that substance. Thus, a single takeoff is spewing the equivalent
of almost one and a half MILLION cigarettes' worth of pollution into the air
that is being sucked into the air intakes of those terminals. As for other
substances, the combustion products of jet fuel are certainly no more innocent
than simple burning leaves of a tobacco plant.
Back in 1989 Congress asked the Department of Transportation to commission a
study of the effects of smoking on those flights that still had smoking at that
time. To their surprise they found that not only was there virtually no
difference in such pollutants as carbon monoxide between smoking and non-smoking
flights, but that for some measures the potential pollutant risk to passengers
was actually GREATER on the non-smoking flights. One measurement in particular
that might be of concern nowadays with bioterrorism fears was that the
non-smoking flights had 9 CFU/m^3 (That's 9 "colony forming units of fungi per
cubic meter) as opposed to only 5 or 6 CFU/m^3 on smoking flights! (U.S. D.O.T.
1989. Report to Congress: Airline Cabin Air Quality.)
Such problems may be exacerbated even more nowadays as airliners have taken
advantage of the absence of smoking and reduced the amount of fresh air in
airliner cabins from 30 air changes per hour down to SIX air changes per hour!
(Boucher, quoting James Repace, Environmental Tobacco Smoke Consultant,
Rendez-Vous 64, 04/26/00) It's noteworthy that the first time Consumer Reports
devoted a cover story to the problem of the quality of airplane air came in
1994, several years after widespread total bans went into effect.
There's no real health reason for universal smoking bans either on planes or in
airports. Flights and sections of terminals should be designated as allowing
smoking and those who wish to avoid such flights and sections can easily do
so. Such total bans are purely a behavior modification technique subscribed to
and promoted by Antismoking groups designed to make smoking as difficult and
unpleasant as possible as a means of encouraging smokers to quit. This sort of
1984ish approach to health has no place in the current milieu of tensions and
concerns around airports and air flights.
The International Federation of Airline Pilots' Associations itself has even
spoken in favor of getting rid of these total bans citing unreasonable universal
bans as a major cause of air rage. To quote from a Sunday Times article by
Roger Makings, "According to statistics in Germany, during a period in 1997 and
1998 of the 1 252 cases of sky rage, 566 were attributed to the ban on smoking
and 389 on alcohol." (Sunday Times, 07/15/01)
Allowing smoking in the terminals will reduce the number of unscheduled and
dangerous forced landings and takeoffs that occur when passengers insist on
smoking during flights that provide them with no accommodation. The same
Antismokers who insist that tobacco is the most addictive drug on the planet
have no right to also insist that smokers should simply cease and desist from
their habit during flights and layovers that can last into dozens of hours.
Logan should be commended for its efforts, not disparaged.
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