Passive smoking

E-Cigarette Smoking Could be Banned at L.A. Restaurants, Beaches

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Michael Dorausch/Flickr

Hold onto to your e-cigarettes while you can, people, because using them might soon be banned in the same places that prohibit lighting up regular smokes.

The L.A. City Council today will consider a new motion to be introduced by Councilman Mitch O’Farrell that would treat electronic devices the same way that cigarette smoking is regulated in town.

And means no puffing, electronic or otherwise, in or on:

-elevators
-supermarkets
–offices
-restaurants
-city beaches, or
-within 25 feet of playground equipment, bleachers, backstops, sports courts and fields, and picnic areas.

Yep. O’Farrell’s spokesman, Tony Arranaga, confirmed to the Weekly the gist of today’s proposal.

According to a statement put out by the offices of O’Farrell and the City Attorney:

The motion directs the City Attorney’s office to draft an ordinance to regulate the usage of electronic smoking devices where smoking is prohibited by law.

But wait, there’s more:

The council today will also weigh Councilman Paul Koretz‘s motion to raise the age limit on e-cigarette purchases to those 18 or older. As it stands, electronic tobacco retailing has no age limit for customers.

There have also been efforts on the state level to treat the battery-operated “vapes” (for nicotine vaporizers or atomizers) the same as regular cigs.

Proponents of e-cigarettes have been enjoying loopholes in the law, often smoking at bars and restaurants without reprisal. They argue that the water vapor emitted by the devices is not smoke and that it is not harmful.

However, some critics say that scientific testing has yet to catch up with the devices. The jury is still out about whether they are the source of second-hand smoke danger.

Maternal Prenatal Smoking and Hearing Loss Among Adolescents.

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ABSTRACT

Importance  Although smoking and secondhand smoke exposure are associated with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) in children and adults, the possible association between prenatal smoke exposure and hearing loss has not been investigated despite the fact that more than 12% of US children experience such prenatal exposure each year.

Objective  To investigate whether exposure to prenatal tobacco smoke is independently associated with SNHL in adolescents.

Design  Cross-sectional data were examined for 964 adolescents aged 12 to 15 years from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005-2006.

Participants  Participants underwent standardized audiometric testing, and serum cotinine levels and self-reports were used to identify adolescents exposed to secondhand smoke or active smokers.

Main Outcomes and Measures  Prenatal exposure was defined as an affirmative parental response to, “Did [Sample Person’s Name] biological mother smoke at any time while she was pregnant with [him/her]?” Sensorineural hearing loss was defined as an average pure-tone hearing level more than 15 dB for 0.5, 1, and 2 kHz (low frequency) and 3, 4, 6, and 8 kHz (high frequency).

Results  Parental responses affirmed prenatal smoke exposure in 16.2% of 964 adolescents. Prenatal smoke exposure was associated with elevated pure-tone hearing thresholds at 2 and 6 kHz (P < .05), a higher rate of unilateral low-frequency SNHL (17.6% vs 7.1%; P < .05) in bivariate analyses, and a 2.6-fold increased odds of having unilateral low-frequency SNHL in multivariate analyses (95% CI, 1.1-6.4) after controlling for multiple hearing-related covariates.

Conclusions and Relevance  Prenatal smoke exposure is independently associated with higher pure-tone hearing thresholds and an almost 3-fold increase in the odds of unilateral low-frequency hearing loss among adolescents. These novel findings suggest that in utero exposure to tobacco smoke may be injurious to the auditory system.

Source: JAMA