Bills target smoking in cars with kids

OLYMPIA – In a state that already has banned smoking in restaurants and bars and texting in cars, lawmakers have proposed bills to snuff out smoking in cars if children are in the vehicle.

Lawmakers pushing the measures say they would protect children’s health. The bills face almost no opposition, not even 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 – in from the House and one from the Senate – 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’s bill would allow a six-month grace period for a public awareness campaign.

If either of the measures becomes 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 with closed windows than in a bar that allows 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 0.04 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 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 secondhand smoke around children has been 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.”