Caught in the act - Stopping smoking in your non-smoking areas.

When you think about cigarette smoking what comes to mind for you? Seems there is a strong divide between those who smoke and those who don’t. What rights do we all share and when does one group infringe on the rights of another?

With smoking, I am torn between a love of personal right and a hate of the harm and deaths that cigarettes and secondhand smoke can cause. We have all heard the bleak statistics, the CDC reports that worldwide, tobacco use causes more than 5 million deaths per year*. When it comes to cigarette smoking in non-smoking areas, what we can all worry about is that secondhand smoke results in an estimated 41,000 deaths per year in the U.S. alone*.

Lawmakers, corporations and property owners have often sided with public safety in mind, which inevitably takes away some personal rights. No matter what side you stand on, once a non-smoking law or policy is in effect, the question is how do we monitor cigarette smoking and enforce safer & healthier environments for us all?

Until recently is has been difficult to create a cigarette smoke monitoring system. The technology has not progressed enough and/or costs have prohibited an effective solution. So, short of human intervention by security guard, employees or even peer pressure, we have just lacked the technology for effective cigarette smoke detection when non-smoking areas had violators, until now.

I was excited when told our Aretas team was developing a basic cigarette smoke detector**. This detector includes an alerts and monitoring system and is based off of what we learned with our casino cigarette smoke monitoring equipment. Our intent was to create a low-cost cigarette smoke alarm and much more that can be used in non-smoking areas such as in hotels, vacation properties, senior living facilities, hospitals or any public space where people ‘sneak’ a cigarette or light other flammable materials.

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The features the team included make our system more useful than just what you think of with a standard ‘smoke detector’. Here are some of the problem solving features that make this system special:

• Silent Alerts: Set your alerts online to notify your team via text and/or email, this allows you to ‘catch’ violators in the act and address appropriately.
• Discourage smoking: Notifying the public and displaying signage of monitoring often lowers occurrences of smoking in non-smoking areas.
• Resolve disputes & enforce policies: Ongoing data gathering shows when and where smoking occured. This data helps back up enforcement of policies such as hotel charges for guest smoking in non-smoking rooms.
• Customizable: Your monitoring can include additional sensors to monitor carbon monoxide, VOC’s or other needs to deliver the decision-making data your need.
• Adjustable: You have control of what time of day you receive alerts such as during business hours. You also have control of what level of smoke** particulate triggers alerts for facilities such as senior living facilities that may not allow candles or other flammables.
• Energy savings: All of our monitors include temperature and relative humidity monitoring. Tracking these allow you to see when energy saving opportunities exist throughout your facilities!

Want to know more, contact your live representative today or contact me directly to get your questions answered, for a free online demo of the system or to review your unique needs. And for more information click here >>

As someone whose mom died of lung cancer I am even more motivated to protect our non-smoking spaces and do my part to reduce negative effects of tobacco products.

As asked at the start of this blog post “When you think about cigarette smoking what comes to mind for you?” Share your thought by posting a comment.

By Rob Wickens
robw ‘at’ aretasworks.com
(877) 218-6232

For information about our specialized tobacco smoke detector and monitoring system click here >>

* Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Diseases and Death: Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/ .
** Note that this monitoring solution detects smoke particulates and is not designed to specifically detect or identify cigarette smoke.