0 Council urged to enact law on smoke-free zones

The Semarang Municipal Legislative Council has been urged to enact a draft bylaw on smoke-free zones to help control the impact of secondhand cigarette smoke, especially in public places. “It is not fair that non-smokers have to inhale smoke that has the potential to affect their health,” Semarang municipal Consumer Protection and Supervisory Institute (LP2K) chairman Ngargono said on Wednesday. He said a bylaw or mayoral regulation on smoke-free areas was urgent. 

Apart from that, Law No. 36/2009 on health also obliges regional administrations to create smoke-free zones in seven designated areas, namely health facilities, learning centers, public transportation, playgrounds, houses of worship, workplaces and public places. Secondhand cigarette smoke has been scientifically proven to have bad effects on human health. Cigarette smoke contains 4,000 different toxic chemical agents, 69 of which are carcinogenic or can cause cancer. 

Dian Nuswantoro University (Udinus) researcher Nurjanah, who did research on exposure to cigarette smoke in public places in Semarang in 2011-2012, said that secondhand cigarette smoke was a very dangerous pollutant when indoors because Indonesians spent 90 percent of their time indoors. In her research, Nurjanah compared the level of pollution in public places where people were allowed to smoke and that of non-smoking public areas. She measured the particulate matter of cigarette smoke in 78 different locations, including universities, offices, restaurants, cafes and airports. 

The higher the particulate matter of a place, the more dangerous the place was to the human lungs. “The particulate matter of smoking areas is three times higher than that of non-smoking ones,” Nurjanah. Her research also revealed that only 5 percent of the examined places could be classified as relatively safe while the rest were either modestly or highly dangerous. “This proves clearly that secondhand cigarette smoke is extremely polluting the air in a room and is dangerous to human health, especially for the room users, consumers, visitors and workers,” Nurjanah said. 

Responding to the demand for a bylaw, councilor Anang Budi Utomo, who is also chairman of the council’s special committee (Pansus) drafting the bylaw, said the draft was still under deliberation and was targeted for approval by April. “In principle, the bylaw will not ban people from smoking but from smoking in designated non-smoking areas,” Anang said. He added that the deliberation was impeded by debate about the relatively short distance between non-smoking areas and cigarette advertisements that could be found almost everywhere. The councilors feared that a smoking ban would not be effective.

source : the jakarta post