[Vision2020] Indoor Air Quality

[Garrett Clevenger]

Government often passes laws to protect the public from harm others may cause them.

In 2002, the city passed a nudity ordinance making it illegal for women to show any portion of their breasts in public view. It also banned "plumber's butt." I guess we can be harmed by what we see.

In 2008, the city rewrote the noise ordinance, making it one of the strictest in the country. Police now have the authority to issue a ticket to any one at any time for any noise the officer deems offensive. The city was willing to infringe our 1st Amendment right of free speech in order to protect the public air ways. I guess we can be harmed by what we hear.

Since what we breath can have a way worse affect than what we see or hear, it seems the city should be concerned with indoor air quality. The city should limit the amount of contaminants employees and patrons are exposed to.

Any business that has poor ventilation can have poor air quality. Employees and patrons should expect to not be exposed to contaminants, and businesses that are aware of these problems should be obligated to fix it. We don't live in the third world.

This doesn't just apply to bars, though. Other businesses exist whose indoor air quality is probably unhealthy. For instance, the first thing you smell walking in to Les Schwab are tires. Employees there are chronically being exposed to volatilizing organic compounds. Perhaps I'm hypersensitive to these contaminants, but I'll get a headache if I breath that air too long. I'm afraid of what affects breathing that air has on people under long-term exposure.

It seems reasonable for government to set indoor air quality standards. If it's up to the city to set and enforce such standards, the city has already set precedence trying to protect the public form nuisances. The city should feel the need to protect what we breath as much as what we see and hear.

Banning indoor smoking in bars may not be as broad of an approach as needed. Setting specific indoor quality standards would benefit more than people in bars and would be fairer approach to regulating businesses in Moscow. If a bar can adequately ventilate their smokey air, smoking shouldn't be banned there. Afterall, it's better than having drunk people on the street just so they can smoke.

On the other hand, all it takes is one indoor smoker to ruin the air for everyone else who doesn't want to breath second hand smoke. Why should that person be allowed to smoke if the business isn't adequately ventilating the room? It seems my right to breath clean air trumps another's right to pollute it, just like my right to quiet trumps the right of the band next door to play loud all night long...
 Garrett Clevenger
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