Officials eye ban on smoky dwellings

 

Health Dept. to survey landlords

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff  |  September 28, 2007

There are smoke-free offices, smoke-free bars, smoke-free malls. Could smoke-free apartment houses and condo towers be next?

Scattered apartment units across the state already ban smoking. But early next year, the Department of Public Health plans to survey landlords, condominium associations, and tenants about the feasibility of making smoke-free residential zones the norm, rather than the exception.

There could even be a state-run registry to connect tenants with landlords and condo boards that offer developments entirely devoid of smoke.

The state review emerges as an influential coalition of health and housing officials is issuing a sweeping call to make smoke-free housing standard across New England. The Asthma Regional Council will issue a report today saying that mounting evidence about the dangers of secondhand smoke, especially to children, provides the best argument for establishing rules that restrict smoking in buildings with multiple units.

It is striking evidence that the war against tobacco has shifted to a new front: the home. Having succeeded in eliminating smoking from most public haunts, antismoking forces are now turning their attention to residences, equating the dangers of tobacco to lead or asbestos.

"For a lot of people now, they go to their workplace, and the workplace is smoke-free, and then they go home and they realize they're being exposed to secondhand smoke," said Eileen Sullivan, director of policy and planning for the state of Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program.

A 2006 US surgeon general's report concluded that secondhand smoke "is not a mere annoyance."

"It is a serious health hazard that can lead to disease and premature death in children and nonsmoking adults," the report said.

Still, health authorities in New England are treading lightly, concerned that if they push for measures that are considered draconian - backing laws that ban smoking in all homes, for example - they will be dismissed as the "public health police," their efforts derailed. Instead, they are championing an approach that combines education with voluntary smoking prohibitions.

Laurie Stillman, executive director of the Asthma Council, said her group has no interest in forcing landlords to go smoke-free. Instead, she said, the coalition is hoping "to get a snowballing effect where you get a few developments doing this, and then more and more will see this as more of a common thing."

That is precisely the course charted in Maine, where a Web-based registry of smoke-free units has proved successful. Landlords who promise their buildings are truly free of smoke can post their vacant units - there are 1,600 listed - and tenants weary of smoke seeping into their apartments can locate a new, smoke-free home.

The Smoke Free Housing Coalition of Maine appeals to a landlord's bottom line. "We emphasize the financial aspect," coalition chairwoman Tina Pettingill said. "They want to save money."

The average cost of maintaining an apartment occupied by a smoker is $2,740, five times more than a unit that is home to a nonsmoker, according to a landlord survey the Maine coalition conducted. The money is spent to slather special paint on smoke-stained walls and replace burned carpeting and counters.

Allen Hebert is all too familiar with those costs. For the last five years he has advertised the 14 apartments he owns in Cambridge, Somerville, and Waltham as nonsmoking. A leader of the Massachusetts Rental Housing Association, a trade group, Hebert enthusiastically endorsed the prospect of a registry listing smoke-free apartments in Massachusetts.

Under state law, according to the Asthma Regional Council report, property owners can prohibit smoking in much the same way that pets can be barred.

"There are still people who smoke; they have to live somewhere," Hebert said. "But if I'm a nonsmoker and I detest smoking and the person next door is smoking like a chimney, why should I have to put up with it?"

When Dana Ann Whidden, 60, moved two years ago into a senior housing development in Dedham, the downstairs neighbor sent cigarette smoke swirling into her apartment.

"And I have asthma," Whidden said. "I would cough, I would get wheezy, I would get sick. It was awful."

So she asked to be moved. Nine months later, she got a first-floor apartment - and neighbors who didn't smoke.

"It's a big difference," Whidden said, "a big, big difference."

Officials eye ban on smoky dwellings

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