Pulmonologists warn: tobacco smoke can spread the coronavirus up to 8 meters away

The Spanish Society of Pulmonology and Thoracic Surgery (SEPAR) warns that smoking on the terraces makes them unsafe places for both users and hotel workers due to the risk of COVID-19 contagion, since the virus can spread with smoke up to eight meters away.

SEPAR also warns that there is solid scientific evidence showing a dangerous association between COVID-19 and tobacco, since exposure to tobacco toxins is related to more serious presentations and a worse outcome of this disease.

“The presence of a history of smoking increases by 79% more the chances of needing ICU admission or of dying and 96% of developing severe COVID-19,” according to SEPAR.

“The spread of the SARS CoV2 virus is caused by aerosols when breathing, being greater when carrying out activities such as smoking or vaping. In spaces with smokers or vapers, coronaviruses with diameters of 0.1 microns can bind to larger tobacco smoke particles, these aerosols loaded with viral particles can reach distances of 8 meters“, they emphasize.

“An excellent vehicle”

“Therefore -summarizes the medical society-, the smoke exhaled from conventional tobacco and electronic devices represents an excellent vehicle for the transmission of virus particles between people.”

On the other hand, smokers and non-smokers remain on the terraces for a longer time without masks, with the risk of transmission being greater, concludes SEPAR, which insists on the “indispensable” need for the reform of the Anti-Tobacco Law to extend the prohibition of smoking in open public spaces such as terraces.

In addition, SEPAR also warns in a statement sent to the media, before the next approval of the Decree on passive smoking and terraces, which also Other diseases can be caused associated with tobacco in passive smokers.

Tobacco-free terraces

This scientific society, which has its headquarters in Barcelona, ​​has already sent the Ministry of Health five essential measures that should be included in the reform of the current Anti-Tobacco Law, one of which is that the terraces remain free of tobacco smoke and from the toxins released by the electronic devices used to vape.

In addition, the society of pulmonologists considers that “this measure should not be approved only circumstantially, to avoid the spread of COVID-19 on the terraces, but rather permanent, so that it contributes to avoiding the contagion of this and other respiratory infections”.

Pulmonologists have recalled that tobacco kills 60,000 people a year in Spain, of which a percentage corresponds to exposure to tobacco smoke in non-smokers, and it is estimated that, in Europe, at least 22,000 deaths per year are due to passive smoking.

According to the Society of Pulmonologists, this exposure in non-smokers carries an increased risk of developing diseases such as ischemic heart diseasea, neoplasms or exacerbations of chronic respiratory diseases, especially in hotel workers or vulnerable populations such as children or pregnant women.