Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Abstract

Poor indoor-air quality has been identified as one of the five greatest environmental problems the public faces. For hospitality enterprises, the most problematic area of the entire air-quality debate is secondhand tobacco smoke, despite the industry's efforts to accommodate both smoking and nonsmoking customers by establishing smoking areas. There are four ways that air contaminants can be lessened: elimination, isolation, filtration, and dilution. The best approach is to eliminate the source, with isolation being a second-best choice. Filtration removes the gases and particulates given off by tobacco smoke while dilution is accomplished by increasing the exchange of outside and inside air. This paper presents the first known study of indoor-air quality at a casino-hotel. In each of 24 sampling areas, four measurements were taken under a variety of occupancy loads: temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide, and respirable particles. The findings led to a series of recommendations regarding air-handling units, outdoor-air intake and circulation, air dampers, exhaust filters, and idling vehicles.