Video Highlights Casino Workers' Health Plight

by Anne Landman — June 17, 2011 - 2:21pm
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Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the public health advocacy group Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights have posted a YouTube video about the plight of casino workers, some of the last employees in the country forced to breathe secondhand cigarette smoke at work. The powerful eight-minute video shows non-smoking casino workers who are ill and dying from prolonged on-the-job exposure to secondhand smoke. An attractive, young non-smoking former casino dealer with an obvious scar on her neck, Sheryl Wilkens, in a hoarse voice describes how she stuck with her job to pay bills while she raised her family. She tearfully tells how in 2006 she developed a lump on her neck, and a subsequent biopsy revealed she had cancer, even though she never smoked. Another worker, a former marathon runner, describes the decline in her health, and how she is now permanently on medication for a number of respiratory diseases caused by her chronic smoke exposure at work. Workers in the multi-billion-dollar gambling industry suffer the highest occupational exposure to secondhand smoke of any workers in the country, and have consistently been left behind as the rest of the country has gone smoke-free as the gambling industry fights to preserve smoking in casinos.

Main Source: 
Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, June 17, 2011

Comments

Second Hand Smoke

Submitted by Patty (not verified) on June 22, 2011 - 9:11pm.

Smoking, in the first place should be ban not only in public places but also in work places. And to think that second hand smoke is more dangerous than if you're actually smoking.These workers are the life of the casino because of their skills & the casino management should see to it that these people are exposed to health hazards related to work. they should do something about it.

Simple Solution

Submitted by Kat (not verified) on June 20, 2011 - 1:13pm.

I don't understand why they don't ban it in the casino like they do in Canada.The smokers go to a specially marked balcony or are outside when they need their fix. The old cry of "we will lose revenue" NEVER materialized as the parking lots can attest to. Those workers have rights to a secure and safe workplace otherwise they should be able to sue for full medical coverage.