According to a press release from the Yolo County Health Department, a poll of Davis residents taken in 2004 found that 84 percent think smoking restrictions should be implemented in shared housing, and 70 percent support completely smoke-free housing. Now finding a cigarette-free apartment is easier than ever before, thanks in part to the Yolo County Smoke-Free Apartments Project.
The initiative began in 2004 as a collaboration with the UC Davis internship program Saving Lungs, Saving Lives, said Vicki Quintana, outreach specialist for the Yolo County Health Department. The project encourages apartments to keep at least half their residences smoke-free, along with providing free information and technical assistance to apartment complexes, she said.
"Smoke can travel through cracks in the doors or ventilation or any shared spaces," Quintana said. "The idea is important because most people in California don't smoke, and only about 14 percent of Californians smoke."
The program, which is entirely voluntary, is important because secondhand smoke has been classified as even more dangerous than originally suspected, Quintana said. The California Air Resources Board recently designated secondhand smoke a toxic air contaminant, and Surgeon General reports from 2006 state that there is "no safe level" of secondhand smoke, Quintana said. "Exposure to secondhand smoke at any level can increase a person's risk for developing tobacco-related illnesses," she said.
Because of the efforts of the Yolo County Smoke-Free Apartment Project and apartments taking their own initiative, Davis offers 16 apartment complexes that have rules stipulating that half or more of the complex must be smoke free, she said.
Property manager for Americana Arms Leslie Tri said her apartment complex joined the Southern California-based Smoke Free Apartment House Registry and increased the number of available smoke-free rooms to a quarter of the complex's 160 rooms. Tri said she had been considering the Smoke-Free Apartment Project, and wouldn't object to enforcing its guidelines. "One of the things I'm hoping to be able to do is to double the number of smoke-free units we have," she said.
Trish Whitcomb, project manager forThe Colleges at La Rue and Russell Park apartments, said that while neither of her complexes were part of the project, both had laws dictating where people can smoke. "For us, in housing, it means that a person can't smoke outside someone's window," she said. "We really encourage people to stay well beyond what the guidelines are for open windows and open doors." This is true of all on-campus housing, she said.
Source: CaliforniaAggie.com.