NEW YORK (Reuters Health)
— Bans on smoking in public
parks are still fairly rare in the United States, despite more than
half of states having indoor smoking restrictions, researchers say.
Just 355 counties out of 3,143 across the nation
have smoke-free park policies — typically they're areas where the
population is younger, more politically liberal and more well-off,
the study team found. But rural and poorer communities should be
encouraged to enact them too in the name of public health, they
conclude.
"Air quality studies have demonstrated that smoking in outdoor areas
such as building entrances or city streets is associated with
measurable concentrations of secondhand smoke components, including
nicotine and particulate matter," said the study's senior author
Elizabeth G. Klein.
"Secondhand smoke exposure can cause cardiovascular damage in as
little as 30 minutes, so even small amounts of exposure, indoor or
outdoor, could be a health concern," said Klein, of the Division of
Health Behavior and Health Promotion at the College of Public Health
at Ohio State University in Columbus.
Banning smoking in public parks also helps to "denormalize" smoking,
and hopefully leads to fewer young people picking up the habit, she
said.
Twenty-eight U.S. states have enacted bans on smoking in all indoor
public places, including bars and restaurants.
In three states, New Jersey, Delaware and California, more than half
the counties have a policy designating city parks as smoke-free. New
Jersey leads with more than 80 percent of counties having outdoor
smoke-free policies.
Seven states, on the other hand, have no such policies: Alaska,
Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nevada, Virginia and the
District of Columbia.
Areas with lower incomes and education levels were least likely to
have smoke-free policies, Klein's team reports in Nicotine & Tobacco
Research.
"For some outdoor environments, like a patio, a bus stop, or a
crowded beach, protection from exposure to tobacco smoke pollution
is a solid rationale," Ryan David Kennedy said.
"For other environments — like parks — where exposure might be more
avoidable, the reasons behind bans have had more to do with 'social
protection,' the idea that we don't want young people to think
smoking is a socially acceptable behavior," he said.
Kennedy is a tobacco control researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health in Baltimore and was not involved in the new
study.
The cities on the road to having outdoor smoking bans now were also
among the first to have indoor bans, and it makes sense that policy
would evolve that way, he said.
"Communities that face deep economic and health disparities may
not have smoke-free outdoor spaces on the top of their list,
particularly if indoor restrictions are not in place," Kennedy said.
"Given that parks provide the means for more physical activity and a
connection with nature, it is important to make them smoke-free,"
said Lambros Lazuras, a health and wellbeing researcher at the
South-East European Research Centre in Thessaloniki, Greece.
"This way, people from all age groups who frequent parks would be
more likely to associate these places with healthy images, and in
the longer term this can pay off as an important community-wide
strategy for healthy and active lifestyles," he said.
In previous research in Minnesota, Klein found that 70 percent of
residents favored smoke-free policies in parks, since they would
decrease litter, reduce secondhand smoke and keep kids out of harm's
way.
She also surveyed park directors: more than 90 percent of those
without an outdoor smoking policy worried that enforcing one would
be tough, but only 26 percent of directors at parks with a
smoke-free policy reported having problems.
"We believe these results suggest a high degree of support for
smoke-free parks among residents, and fears of policy difficulties
among park and recreation directors who work in parks without a
tobacco-free policy were much greater than actual problems
experienced in Minnesota tobacco-free park areas," Klein said.
"Smoking continues to be the leading cause of death and disease in
the United States — and smoke-free policies are associated with 'denormalizing'
smoking, as well as supporting people who are trying to quit,"
Kennedy said.
