Thanks to Proposition 10, California has a lot of money to spend. Generated by tobacco sales this $700 million dollars per year is targeted at improving our children’s health; added to the multi-state tobacco settlement one might hope for dramatic improvements. Without careful balancing of the issues, however, much of this money could go for naught.
Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) is unequivocally a health hazard, but it is not clear how best to protect our children from its dangers. In the last few years, medical evidence has shown that ETS can have pose serious long-term health risks for children, especially young children. Incidental ETS exposure in public places has been greatly reduced by a combination of regulations and changes in preferences. Children, however, are primarily exposed to ETS at home from a smoking household member.
Education, advertising, school health programs, etc will not reduce young children’s exposure to ETS in smoking households. Naturally as the number of smoking households reduces, the incidental dose to children reduces, but no one is seriously advocating restricting peoples right to smoke in their own home. There is, however, at least one easy method of greatly reducing young children’s exposure to household ETS -- ventilation.
As a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, much of my efforts have been focussed at Indoor Air Quality and Energy Efficiency in homes, funded by the State and Federal government. Proper ventilation can help provide a quality indoor environment at low energy cost. As chairman of the residential ventilation standard being promulgated by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), I have observed how political the issue is.
California homes are primarily ventilated by a combination of infiltration and natural ventilation. (Infiltration is air leakage through cracks; natural ventilation is the intentional use of openings such as windows.) Exhaust fans are an excellent way to remove unwanted contaminants from houses and are installed in some California kitchens and bathrooms.
A relatively low cost method of reducing ETS exposure in homes is to install a ventilation system that exhausts air from the rooms where smoking most commonly takes place and supplies fresh air to the rooms where the children spend most of their time. (For example, exhaust air from a den and/or master bedroom and supply fresh air to the children’s rooms.) The ideal configuration depends on occupant activities in the house.
Filtration options could provide the same effect, but filters require maintenance and must be changed. Filter systems require more energy than simple fans and are more expensive to install. In the mild climate enjoyed by the vast majority of the State’s residents the impact of inducing extra ventilation will be mild in terms of energy or comfort, but significant in terms of health—and not just related to ETS.
The money from Proposition 10 could pay to install simple ventilation systems in every smoking household with children in the State in a single year. Naturally there are other worthy things to do with that money as well, but in the rush for counties to spend the money on new bureaucracies, clinics and ad campaigns this simple measure could have an enormous payback to our children’s health. Those planning how best to use this new influx of money should give serious consideration to Residential Ventilation systems to reduce the health risks of ETS for our children.
Max Sherman; January 1999
Max Sherman is a staff senior scientist at the Lawernce Berkeley National Laboratory. He is the group leader of the Energy Performance of Buildings group of the Indoor Environment Department.