Smokers Face The Sniff Test

If you’re visiting Kimball Physics, be prepared to pass the sniff test administered by receptionist Jennifer Walsh.

If she catches a whiff of cigarette smoke on your breath, hair or clothes, she will ask you to step outside.

To protect its employees’ health, the electronics manufacturer bars anyone who has smoked in the previous two hours or even smells of tobacco.

The 3-year-old policy, which applies to visitors and employees alike, helps keep airborne particles out of the laboratories where workers assemble ion and electron guns used in equipment such as electron microscopes.

But it was primarily intended to protect employees’ health, President Chuck Crawford said.

“It is our experimental experience that people can be made ill by amounts of tobacco residues that are below the level of sensitivity the nose can detect,” Crawford said. “We’ve taken the position it’s not OK to make people even mildly sick.”

Kimball’s 50 employees are on the honor system. If an employee complains that a co-worker smells of smoke, the offender faces discipline.