It’s always not that simple. I have a long list of things I know that trigger my asthma - I’m sure other asthma sufferers have a similar mental list. I avoid a lot of these, but why should smokers really be the barrier to leading a normal life?




The last two summers, people with breathing disorders were told to avoid central London, especially the Oxford Street. The ground ozone and the airborne particulates from diesel exhaust were creating a very dangerous mix which could cause respiratory problems. The problem is not necessarily the exhaust gases, but the particles. Diesel exhaust particles are quite large, and they are more likely to cause a reaction than petrol engine exhausts. In the summer I am more likely to be on the coast than in the middle of a town. It helps.

Taking the inhaler is a bad habit to get into to. I have two - one to prevent, which I take every day, and one to relieve, which I do so sparingly. The common relievers are not good if used on a regular daily basis. They can in the long term cause more harm than good.

In my experience, smokers seem disinterested in the harm they cause others. Asthma is an invisible problem to them. I am sure that if the act of smoking caused other people in the vicinity to exhibit dramatic external symptoms, we would not be having this conversation because it would have been banned a long time ago.

Without meaning to sound callous (and I'm only playing devils advocate here) why should the fact that you have an illness that they can't see, prevent smokers from living a normal life? I'm not talking about you standing in a room full of smokers while they all take turns at blowing smoke in your face, you can already go into any public building without fear of smoke, so all we're really talking about is the odd occasion when (in the open air) you don't notice someone with a cigarette in their hand or a puff of smoke coming from them. I mean, how much smoke sets off an attack for you? half a lungfull? an entire lungfull? an hour in a smokey room? How often do you have to use your inhaler on your average shopping day in town?

A smoker can look at you in the street and (unless you're actually using your inhaler) have no idea that you have an illness which they could possibly exacerbate. If someone in the street is smoking, you have more chance of noticing that they are a smoker, than they do of spotting that you're asthmatic.


I don't know a single smoker who would intentionally set off a reaction in an asthmatic or wouldn't do whatever they could to avoid one. I would expect that 9 times out of 10 it happens accidentally, and if you point out to someone in a confined space that you are asthmatic (and you're not actually standing in a smoking area ) I would bet that most reasonable people would put it out or move away. IMO Smokers have put up with being shunted out of "polite society" into a garden shed for their habit, that sounds pretty considerate to me.


But it doesn't and that should tell you something.
One of the reasons that we keep on having this debate (society, not specifically us) is that non-smokers can't understand (or don't care) why smokers smoke, and the smokers can't understand (or don't care) why everyone else thinks that not smoking is somehow superior to smoking. Leaving aside for a second the actual amounts involved, a smoker may smoke 20-30 cigarettes a day, only a tiny portion of these are going to be 'in public' where they might affect you. You may go to town 3 times a week and maybe breathe in someones smoke during two of those trips.

Let's say that tomorrow the government bans all smokers from smoking in public, that leaves only their house and garden, many smokers will smoke outside at home, so if you have a smoker living next door and you're that affected by breathing smoke in once or twice a week, what will it be like breathing in the smoke from your neighbours garden everytime you go out there?

Thinking this through to it's logical conclusion, a total public ban will then be forcing any friends or relatives you have who smoke, to make a choice between seeing you, or smoking, they won't be able to come to your house and stand out the front for a fag while they visit unless you host them in your garden, where you will be left with their residual smoke, and if it's a long journey they will then have to plan their route according to pre-determined cigarette breaks, you won't be able to visit them because there'll only be one place they're still allowed to smoke and you'll be in it, breathing their smoke.

If you're going to ban all public smoking on the off-chance that the percentage of the population who have violent and immediate reactions to a whiff of smoke, get one, then I think the more reasonable suggestion would be that those few people are provided with independant breathing apparatus.

I realise that the threat of an attack must be at the forefront of your mind, given that you suffer, but the fact that one of your triggers is smoke doesn't make it reasonable to consign an entire section of the population (and a not insignificant one) to the dustbin of life, just so that you can smell the car exhaust fumes more clearly.

Last year, when working at my old job, it was so bad that if somebody smoke 100M upwind from me, I'd start coughing and have to grab my inhaler - usually wondering wtf was going on, because the attack would usually start before I had become enough to actually smell it!

After the "attack" was over, it would leave me coughing up phlegm for about 4-6 hours afterwards.

It made going shopping at the supermarket or in the town centre and absolute nightmare!

Thankfully, since changing jobs, I haven't had to use my inhaler once and I visited a friend of mine last week, who is a chain smoker, and, although I felt a severe restriction in my chest, I didn't need my inhaler or an anti-histamine afterwards.


Which is why smokers should have the common courtesy of not smoking around non-smokers... I think shops and companies aren't doing themselves any favours with letting/making people smoke outside the main door to their premises! It would certainly put me off going to visit them. Not because they employ smokers, but because I think it is absolutely disgusting to force visitors to your business premises to have to walk through a cloud of smoke - even if nobody is currently smoking, the ashtray stinks out to a range of several metres, especially if it has been in use for a long time (emptying won't get rid of the smell, you need to thoroughly clean it with a chemical cleaner to get rid of the stink).


I think we are back to your extreme sports being dangerous to the health as well... A mountain climber doesn't stand on the mountain and throw large lumps of rock down the mountain at people who happen to be walking past! That is what a smoker does to everybody in range - and the range the smoke can travel and still be noticeable is much larger than people think - as I said, the amount of smoke drifting downwind from a smoker 100M away was enough to set off one of my attacks!

Somebody eating a packet of crisps, a triathlete, a bungee jumper etc. aren't going to affect me with their activities, unless the athlete runs into me or the bungee jumper didn't take precautions and landed on my head. A drinker won't affect me, unless he starts breathing in my face (or if he has really drunk a lot, when I come within about 2-3M of him... Cigarette smoking, unfortunately, has a much wider area of affect than any of the other examples you've given. The smoke can travel 10s of metres and still be noticeable, somebody who has smoked can walk into a room and within seconds, even standing on the other side of a room, you can smell that they have been smoking, and it isn't a pleasant smell.


I think this is where your argument falls down. It has nothing to do with non-smokers thinking not smoking is superior. It is that the smoke smells disgusting and can cause problems for non-smokers. It has nothing to do with superiority, it has everything to do with being courteous when around other people.


Around here, it is more likely to be every time you go to town, you will be subjected to second hand smoke every 50 metres or so.


I do have a smoker next door and when I go out in the morning to leave for work, if it isn't windy, I can usually tell whether he has left for work, before I have left my door! Luckily there is a garage and a fence between him and our garden, so hopefully we won't notice it in summer - and the patio is on the other side of the house, which is open to the street. The wind should also, generally, come from the other direction.


I don't think this is any different to the banning of cars "dirty" cars in city centres in Germany - some large cities only allow Euro 4 cars in, others only 3 and 4.

(A diesel can only get an E4 rating if it has a particle filter. I paid about 800€ to get my Mondeo upgraded, so that I don't have any problems going in, but a lot of bigger and older diesels (Audis and VWs being particularly affected) only get an E2 or E3 classification. All of the taxi fleets around the large cities have had to get their vehicles upgraded - either renewing the fleet or getting particle filters installed - as well as the bus fleets. Delivery vehicles are also affected.)

Italy has such a bad smog problem, that they have days where only 4s are allowed on the roads (anywhere) and when the smog is bad, they have dispari-pari days (odd and even days), where only E4s and cars with either odd or even numbered licence plates are allowed into the towns and cities. Many couples arrange it so that, when they have 2 cars, one is odd and one is even, so that at least one of them can use the car on dispari or pari days.

On Sundays no lorries are allowed on the roads (including motorways), unless they have an exemption (E.g. perishable goods or fuel).


Given that the city centres are being pedestrianised and "dirty" vehicles are being banned from cities, cigarette smoke is ever more noticeable as a pollutant.