Clean Air? Can't Wait!

I am a bartender. For the last 20 years, I have worked in the hospitality industry and enjoyed serving those who sit around my three feet of mahogany.

Several years ago, I lost two of my closest friends—both smokers—to tobacco-related diseases. Their deaths motivated me to quit smoking myself and to begin a campaign to protect bar and restaurant workers from secondhand smoke, an EPA class-A carcinogen that kills over 53,000 noan-smoking Americans every year.

Smoke-free workplaces are a matter of workers’ rights. Hard-working individuals employed in office buildings, airports, schools and even the Massachusetts State House and Congress are all protected from secondhand smoke.

Why should the hard-working individuals, like me, who work in bars and restaurants be afforded anything less than equal health protections? Smoking used to be allowed in those other workplaces, but was banned when the health hazards became apparent. It is time for the hospitality industry to catch up.

Individuals do, indeed, have the right to breathe carcinogens into their own lungs; they just do not have the right to blow them into mine.

On Wednesday, Oct. 1 Cambridge and Somerville will go 100 percent smoke-free in all worksites, including all bars and restaurants. The new policy finally affords members of the hospitality industry the same health protections that nearly every other profession already enjoys: clean air.

People will no longer be exposed to deadly secondhand smoke, a substance containing over 43 cancer-causing agents. Bar and restaurant workers will be free from a risk that makes them 50 to 75 percent more likely to contract lung cancer than the rest of our population. By establishing 100 percent smoke-free worksites on Oct. 1, we will eliminate a serious threat to our workers’ health.

Cambridge and Somerville are the most recent highlights in a smoke-free-workplaces movement that now includes over 90 Massachusetts cities and towns. California, New York, Delaware, Maine and Connecticut have passed smoke-free workplaces laws, the entirety of Ireland and Norway will go smoke-free in 2004, and the United Nations recently passed a similar rule for its New York City headquarters. A statewide bill in Massachusetts will hopefully protect all workers throughout the Commonwealth later this year.

My Cambridge bar went smoke-free in 2001, largely because of my efforts. Regulars who said they would no longer visit my establishment still sit on my bar stools. I have seen the future, and it is bright and clean—and my tip jar is full.

I am counting down the days for Cambridge and Somerville to go smoke-free. I hope you will enjoy the fresh air, as I have, and will go out for a good, clean time.

Jody Troiano is a bartender at the Characters’ Bar & Grill in Kendall Square and a member of Bar & Restaurant Workers Against Tobacco’s Health Effects (BREATHE).