OLYMPIA — In a state that already has banned smoking inside restaurants and bars and texting in cars, lawmakers want to snuff out smoking in cars if children are in the vehicle.
Lawmakers pushing the measure say that it’s a common sense bill that protects a child’s health, and everyone seems to agree. There’s almost no opposition to the bill, including from the tobacco industry.
“We are such a strong state in helping adults stop smoking,” said Rep. Shay Schual-Berke, D-Normandy Park, the House bill’s prime sponsor. “Why aren’t we protecting kids? This is a very obvious public health issue we can do something about.”
Two measures are moving through the Legislature. Both would make smoking in the car with a child present a secondary offense, meaning that law-enforcement agents can’t pull over a motorist just for seeing a child and a lit cigarette in the same vehicle.
The difference between the bills is the age of a child. In Schual-Berke’s measure, the cutoff age is 18, while the Senate version’s is 13.
Schual-Berke said she is not looking for another way to ticket motorists, and has included an amendment in her bill that would allow a six-month grace period for a public awareness campaign.
If the measures become law, Washington would join California, Arkansas, Louisiana and Puerto Rico in banning smoking when kids are in the vehicle, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The House and Senate bills have cleared committees and now await a floor vote.
Levels of smoke particles are much higher in a car that has the windows closed than in bars that allow smoking, said David Kalman, a professor of environmental health at the University of Washington.
His research found that the levels in a car with the windows closed are 6 to 10 milligrams per cubic meter. Citing another project in the New York-New Jersey area, he said levels in bars were 2.4 milligrams. The EPA target for healthy air, Kalman said, is .04 milligrams.
“A car is much worse than a smoky bar,” Kalman said. “I think it’s a real bad idea to expose children to cigarette smoke in a car.”
He added that cigarette smoke spreads in a car equally, so that it doesn’t matter where the smoker is sitting.
Schual-Berke, who is a cardiologist, said second-hand smoke around children is linked to Sudden Infant Death syndrome, and a number of other conditions that can appear later in life, including asthma, miscarriages and cancer.
“I can’t imagine if a parent knew this, I don’t think a responsible parent would continue smoking in front of a child in a car,” she said. “It’s hard to argue against a bill that will inform parents.”
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