The air quality in restaurants, hotels and other hospitality establishments has recently become the subject of public debate. The central issue has been whether smoking should be completely banned from such establishments. Some city councils have taken action to implement bans - with varying effect- and others have not yet decided one way or the other. The new Workers Compensation Board occupational health and safety air quality regulations have the potential to transcend these municipal deliberations, which have been primarily customer orientated, by mandating minimum air quality requirements for people employed in the hospitality industry throughout the province.

The issue in question can now be more precisely stated: Is environmental tobacco smoke the only air contaminant of major significance in hospitality establishments, and can air quality standards be achieved by measures such as designated smoking and non-smoking areas, increased ventilation flow rates, or air scrubbers, or is a total smoking ban required.

The following paper describes the results of a study completed in 1996 in Vancouver. The paper first describes the measuring technology to be used (portable integrating nephelometer), and establishes acceptable correlations between this technology and other accepted methods. The particular advantage of the portable integrating nephelometer is that a continuous log of air quality data is possible and these data can be automatically downloaded to a personal computer for analysis.

Particulate concentrations were then measured in restaurants, bars and kitchens, and were found to be affected by factors which included smoking policy, number of cigarettes smoked, and amount of cooking activity. For restaurants with smoking and non-smoking sections, measurements were made at the edge of the non-smoking section. This is the worst-case situation for a non-smoking customer.

From the discussion of results we may infer the following points:

• There is little difference between the non-smoking restaurants and the non-smoking sections of restaurants with designated smoking areas.
• There are large differences between unrestricted smoking establishments and those with designated smoking areas.
• Cooking can lead to particulate levels in non-smoking establishments as high as those in establishments that allow smoking.

The study appears to constitute an excellent pilot for a much larger study which could provide the information necessary for decisions about how hospitality industry air quality standards can be achieved.