By Kathryn Doyle
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Bans on smoking in public parks
are still fairly rare in the United States, despite more than
half of states having indoor smoking restrictions, researchers
Just 355 counties out of 3,143 across the nation have
smoke-free park policies - typically they're areas where the
population is younger, more politically liberal and more
well-off, the study team found. But rural and poorer communities
should be encouraged to enact them too in the name of public
health, they conclude.
"Air quality studies have demonstrated that smoking in
outdoor areas such as building entrances or city streets is
associated with measurable concentrations of secondhand smoke
components, including nicotine and particulate matter," said the
study's senior author Elizabeth G. Klein.
"Secondhand smoke exposure can cause cardiovascular damage
in as little as 30 minutes, so even small amounts of exposure,
indoor or outdoor, could be a health concern," said Klein, of
the Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion at the
College of Public Health at Ohio State University in Columbus.
Banning smoking in public parks also helps to "denormalize"
smoking, and hopefully leads to fewer young people picking up
the habit, she said.
Twenty-eight U.S. states have enacted bans on smoking in all
indoor public places, including bars and restaurants.
In three states, New Jersey, Delaware and California, more
than half the counties have a policy designating city parks as
smoke-free. New Jersey leads with more than 80 percent of
counties having outdoor smoke-free policies.
Seven states, on the other hand, have no such policies:
Alaska, Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nevada, Virginia
and the District of Columbia.
Areas with lower incomes and education levels were least
likely to have smoke-free policies, Klein's team reports in
Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
"For some outdoor environments, like a patio, a bus stop, or
a crowded beach, protection from exposure to tobacco smoke
pollution is a solid rationale," Ryan David Kennedy said.
"For other environments - like parks - where exposure might
be more avoidable, the reasons behind bans have had more to do
with 'social protection,' the idea that we don't want young
people to think smoking is a socially acceptable behavior," he
Kennedy is a tobacco control researcher at Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and was not
involved in the new study.
The cities on the road to having outdoor smoking bans now
were also among the first to have indoor bans, and it makes
sense that policy would evolve that way, he said.
"Communities that face deep economic and health disparities
may not have smoke-free outdoor spaces on the top of their list,
particularly if indoor restrictions are not in place," Kennedy
"Given that parks provide the means for more physical
activity and a connection with nature, it is important to make
them smoke-free," said Lambros Lazuras, a health and wellbeing
researcher at the South-East European Research Centre in
"This way, people from all age groups who frequent parks
would be more likely to associate these places with healthy
images, and in the longer term this can pay off as an important
community-wide strategy for healthy and active lifestyles," he
In previous research in Minnesota, Klein found that 70
percent of residents favored smoke-free policies in parks, since
they would decrease litter, reduce secondhand smoke and keep
kids out of harm's way.
She also surveyed park directors: more than 90 percent of
those without an outdoor smoking policy worried that enforcing
one would be tough, but only 26 percent of directors at parks
with a smoke-free policy reported having problems.
"We believe these results suggest a high degree of support
for smoke-free parks among residents, and fears of policy
difficulties among park and recreation directors who work in
parks without a tobacco-free policy were much greater than
actual problems experienced in Minnesota tobacco-free park
areas," Klein said.
"Smoking continues to be the leading cause of death and
disease in the United States - and smoke-free policies are
associated with 'denormalizing' smoking, as well as supporting
people who are trying to quit," Kennedy said.