http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19502040/

Just one night in smoky bar can be toxic
Study finds carcinogen in nonsmoking workers after brief exposure

Updated: 10:45 a.m. ET June 29, 2007

CHICAGO - {Reuters}Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke in bars and
restaurants can result in measurable levels of a toxin in workers’
bodies that is known to cause lung cancer, U.S. researchers said on
Thursday.

They found nonsmoking workers in Oregon who worked a single shift in a
bar or restaurant that allowed smoking were more likely to have a
detectable level of NNK — a carcinogen linked with lung cancer — in
their bodies than those who worked in nonsmoking establishments.

“NNK is only found in the body as a result of either smoking or
breathing other people’s smoke,” said Michael Stark of the Multnomah
County Health Department in Portland, Ore., whose study appears in the
American Journal of Public Health.

Stark and colleagues studied 52 nonsmoking bar and restaurant workers
who were exposed to smoke at work, and compared them to 32 similar
nonsmoking workers from communities in Oregon that prohibited smoking in
such places.

For the study, participants, mainly young, uninsured women, gave urine
samples before and after working at least four hours.

“As a group, four out of five of the nonsmokers who worked in a smoking
environment had some detectable level of this deadly chemical in their
body, and as a group, for every hour that they worked, that level
increased by 6 percent,” Stark said in a telephone interview.

Other studies have shown that nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke
have about a 20 percent higher risk of lung cancer. They are also at a
higher risk of asthma and perinatal complications such as sudden infant
death syndrome.

“This adds to the very strong and growing body of evidence that
second-hand smoke exposure is dangerous and people need to be
protected,” Stark said.

According to Stark, clean indoor air acts protect about 70 percent of
workers from exposure to tobacco smoke.

Secondhand smoke causes about 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 46,000 heart
disease deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year,
according to the American Lung Association.

Levels of environmental smoke in restaurants and bars are two to five
times higher than in homes with smokers, they said.