Reducing bartenders' exposure to ETS by a local ventilation - field evaluation of the solution

Restaurant workers have a high risk to be exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in their work. In Finland the latest tobacco Act has set more stringent requirements for the smoking in restaurants. Despite of the tightened legislation most of the restaurant employees are still continuously exposed to ETS. Ventilation techniques enable significantly to reduce employees exposure to ETS in hospitality facilities, where smoking is permitted. The results of this study shows that with especially designed bar local ventilation solution it was achieved even lower exposures to ETS in smoking area workplaces than in nonsmoking area.