Smoke-Free Zone
Sep 26th, 2006 at 9:27 am by Susie
Health care is a major industry in Philadelphia. Can we afford to have such a sudden drop in heart-attack revenue?
DALLAS (Reuters) - A Colorado city ban on smoking at workplaces and in public buildings may have sparked a steep decline in heart attacks, researchers reported on Monday.
In the 18 months after a no-smoking ordinance took effect in Pueblo in 2003, hospital admissions for heart attacks for city residents dropped 27 percent, according to the study led by Dr. Carl Bartecchi, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver.
“Heart attack hospitalizations did not change significantly for residents of surrounding Pueblo County or in the comparison city of Colorado Springs, neither of which have non-smoking ordinances,” said the American Heart Association, which published the study in its journal Circulation.
The association said this was further evidence of the damage wrought by secondhand smoke.
“The decline in the number of heart attack hospitalizations within the first year and a half after the non-smoking ban that was observed in this study is most likely due to a decrease in the effect of secondhand smoke as a triggering factor for heart attacks,” it said.
It said the researchers had taken into account other variables such as air pollution and community-wide changes in preventive care and concluded that they did not have an impact on their findings.
Maybe walking down to smoke improved the fitness of the smoker’s?
I would buy my argument until the decrease is specifically linked to those who do not or did not smoke.
Just a test — please ignore:
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