The smoke of two cigarettes 5 meters apart can produce peaks of PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) on the beach that are more than double those measured in a busy urban open space at rush hour
I hear they want to ban smoking on the beach. I’m not a smoker, but I wonder: isn’t the ban an exaggeration and would it be enough just to be polite?
He answers Robert Boffipulmonologist, responsible for Pneumology and the Anti-Smoking Center at the National Cancer Institute of Milan (GO TO THE FORUM)
Smoking, even outdoors, can do damage and we have proved it with a research coordinated by the National Cancer Institute focused on the measurement of emissions of black carbon (carbon black, a pollutant classified as probably carcinogenic) from lit cigarettes under umbrellas. Black carbon is an important indicator of neighborhood pollution and the data that has emerged from our research is staggering: scientific experiments and analyzes allow us to say that cigarettes are far more dangerous than other sources of pollutants, including cars and trucks. We have carried out numerous investigations, in winter in cities and in summer in holiday resorts, always arriving at the same conclusions.
Smoke-free spaces
That’s why many mayors have begun issuing ordinances establishing public and open urban spaces smoke-free in Italy (the first was the beach of Bibione, wanted by the former mayor Pasqualino Codognotto, now considered a model to imitate). The percentage of black carbon contained in the particulate is a particularly significant indicator of the quality of airborne dust in terms of their danger. In fact, black carbon is harmful to health as able to convey within the human organism carcinogens, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and metals. In 2012, when there was still no restriction on smoking on Italian beaches, we carried out the first surveys in the Livorno area, to begin to understand the problem and understand how to influence future studies.
The experiment
We have installed detectors in two locations: one on the shoreline of Vada and the other in Piazza Grande in Livorno, where there is a high concentration of traffic. Results: the black carbon values measured on the beach, downwind, they reached, 5 meters away from the source of two cigarettes, an average of 6 thousand nanograms per cubic meter. The same measurement in Piazza Grande was 2,700 nanograms. This means that the smoke of two cigarettes 5 meters apart can produce peaks of PAHs on the beach (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) more than double those measured in a busy urban open space at rush hour. Similar data was also recorded in our surveys on the beach of Bibione (these days published in the important scientific journal Pulmonology
), where we carried out the analyzes in 2014 and 2019, when anti-smoking measures had already gradually entered into force.
Know to decide
it emerged that on the beach, where smoking is no longer permitted, a person passively exposed to black carbon values three times lower in relation to when the prohibition did not exist and it happens even if you are downwind of the smoking area. The mayor of Bibione was a pioneer: it has allowed us to demonstrate that, thanks to the ban on smoking, a person on the beach is significantly less exposed than where instead the limitations are reserved only for the shoreline or, worse, where it is still possible to smoke under the umbrellas. Knowing to decide the winning slogan of a competition that we promoted years ago in schools: the duty of our activity as doctors and researchers to inform and give elements of understanding of the harms of cigarettes and the benefits not only of quitting smoking, but also of breathing air not polluted by passive smoke.
July 30, 2023 (change July 30, 2023 | 08:07)
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