Editor:
With the attention of anti-smoking week slowly fading one has to give credit to the B.C. government for providing smokers with nicotine replacement products at pharmacies or by mail.
The Union of BC Municipalities passed a resolution last year calling for a province-wide ban on smoking outdoors. If this includes private properties then most people will not face the dangers of being exposed to secondhand smoke from tobacco products.
Now this raises the question what will government do to protect citizens from equally dangerous smoke; wood smoke; which is referred to as the New Secondhand Smoke? As woodsmoke contains similar chemical compositions as tobacco smoke and has similar health effects, linked to heart and respiratory diseases and lung cancer, it also should be banned province-wide.
However, eliminating these toxic woodsmoke emissions in neighbourhoods falls under the jurisdiction of municipalities, and here on the Lower Mainland these powers have been transferred to Metro (to the best of my knowledge). But in order to implement a bylaw (which protects people from breathing health hazardous woodsmoke) Metro needs the public voice.
Please e-mail Metro: regulation&enforcement@metrovancouver.org and request that woodsmoke emissions in neighbourhoods be outlawed in order to reduce human suffering.
Brie Oishi, Port Coquitlam
