France bans cigarette smoking in public places
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
Photo credit: Pixabay
According to NPR, France is banning smoking in public places starting July 1. French authorities want to reduce smoking among young people, something that actually preceded the outdoor smoking ban. NPR reports that six years ago, 25% of 17-year-olds smoked. That is now down to 17%.
Why am I writing about smoking in a blog about noise? I actually started out as a no-smoking advocate decades before I became an advocate for quiet. The original reason had nothing to do with health.
In 1969, I was taking a college seminar in a small room in wintertime. Three or four of the 12 students smoked. My one wool sweater reeked of secondhand smoke when I returned to my dorm room. The next day I took it to the dry cleaner, but I couldn’t afford to do that every week. Before the next class, I asked the professor to ask my classmates not to smoke during the 90-minute class. He admitted that the smoke bothered him, and collected the ashtrays on the table and put them on the radiator cover.
He told the next class before it began, “You may have noticed that the ashtrays have been cleared from the table. The smoke bothers me and some of your classmates. Please don’t smoke during class. If you feel the need to smoke before class ends, please step outside and have your cigarette.”
In medical school and residency training, I was notorious among my friends for not allowing them to smoke in my presence, forcing them into the winter cold if they needed to smoke. I wore a no-smoking button from the American Cancer Society on my white coat and I counseled patients to stop smoking.
When restaurants and airplanes started offering no-smoking sections, I always requested seating in them. Unfortunately, the secondhand smoke couldn’t read the signs. After the Environmental Protection Agency declared environmental tobacco smoke (the technical term for secondhand smoke) to be a Class A carcinogen with no known safe level of exposure, cities, states and eventually the federal government banned indoor smoking.
Noise has been called “the new secondhand smoke.” I used that term as the title of an invited article in Acoustics Today and it was part of a subsequent article in Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics.
Just as smoking used to be viewed as a pleasurable and harmless habit until its hazards for both smokers and those exposed to secondhand smoke were proven, noise is a hazard to those who enjoy it and those unwillingly exposed to it. Wanted noise, such as that from personal listening devices, causes hearing loss. Unwanted noise, such as noise pollution from road traffic and aircraft noise, causes cardiovascular disease and increased mortality. That’s why with the help of many noise colleagues, I came up with a new definition of noise: Noise is unwanted and/or harmful sound.
Just as clean, smoke-free air is better and healthier for anyone who breathes, soon for those in France, a quieter world will be a better and healthier world for all.