Allergies in the schools

Mine is of a number of calls from parents who were “concerned” about smoking in the bowling alley I work at. This building is larger than a hockey rink, just to give perspective.

These calls asked if we had ionized all of our surfaces, starting with the carpets and walls, to get the “smell” of smoke out of the center, and went on from there, into second-hand smoke “allergies”, and so on.

I point this out, because these calls started coming nine months AFTER the smoking ban statewide went into effect in June ‘06.
And, I STILL get about one every couple of weeks even today! (Come to think of it, I was getting calls about this before the forced ban went into effect; the center policy was no smoking on Tuesday, Thursdays, Saturdays, or Sundays before 5PM. All of our birthday parties were on Saturdays and Sundays.)

Second-hand smoke (head shaking in disbelief) . . . if I put your kid’s group at one end, while someone is smoking at the other end (180 feet away), how is little Johnny/Janie going to notice? I have said before: I seriously doubt that your kid can inhale second-hand smoke from someone half a football field away, in a center with smoke-eaters and good air circulation; if a parent claims that the kid is allergic, most of the time they were never tested! (More than likely it’s hyper-sensitive parents who never grew up around a smoker or just can’t stand the smell themselves).

What’s next, “no-beer days” where the mere presence of kids in a building means no sale of beer or alcohol, on the fear of second-hand drinking??
And now with so-called THIRD-hand smoke (what the @%^$% is that??), what’s next?