Smoking ban leads to big drop in heart attacks

Several years ago, worked as a waitress. The first restaurant I worked at was in a non-smoking county. After 3 years, that restaurant closed, and I was transferred to a restaurant in an adjacent county, which did not have a smoking ban. I started getting chest pains. Then that county passed a no-smoking ban, and my chest pains stopped. I also have asthma, and that is definitely aggravated by second-hand smoke.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28450513/

Hospitalized cases fell 41 percent after one city’s smoke-free workplace law
Associated Press updated 3:00 p.m. ET, Wed., Dec. 31, 2008

ATLANTA - A smoking ban in one Colorado city led to a dramatic drop in heart attack hospitalizations within three years, a sign of just how serious a health threat secondhand smoke is, government researchers said Wednesday.

The study, the longest-running of its kind, showed the rate of hospitalized cases dropped 41 percent in the three years after the ban of workplace smoking in Pueblo, Colo., took effect. There was no such drop in two neighboring areas, and researchers believe it’s a clear sign the ban was responsible.

The study suggests that secondhand smoke may be a terrible and under-recognized cause of heart attack deaths in this country, said one of its authors, Terry Pechacek of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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In the new study, researchers reviewed hospital admissions for heart attacks in Pueblo. Patients were classified by ZIP codes. They then looked at the same data for two nearby areas that did not have bans — the area of Pueblo County outside the city and for El Paso County.

In Pueblo, the rate of heart attacks dropped from 257 per 100,000 people before the ban to 152 per 100,000 in the three years afterward. There were no significant changes in the two other areas.