About 30% of workers across Taiwan exposed to secondhand smoke: agency

About 30 percent of nonsmoking workers in Taiwan are exposed to secondhand smoke in the workplace even though smoking has been banned in common work areas since 2009, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said.

The rate of secondhand smoke exposure at offices in Taiwan climbed to 28.1 percent in 2022, up from 22.1 percent in 2020, the agency said in a statement earlier this week.

During the same three-year period, 19.7 percent of workers smoked at work in 2022, up from 17.6 percent in 2020, with the smoking rate among men increasing from 26.9 percent to 30 percent, and the rate among women rising from 4.2 percent to 4.6 percent, it said.

Since the nationwide ban on smoking in indoor workplaces shared by three or more people took effect on Jan. 11, 2009, those contravening the regulation have been subject to a fine of NT$10,000.

However, complaints about smoking on the job — mostly in a toilet or on a balcony — are still common, HPA Tobacco Control Division head Lo Su-ying (羅素英) said.

Lu encouraged members of the public to report workplace smoking at the toll-free hotline 0800531-531, and said that local health authorities would step up inspections after receiving complaints.

Citing a research by the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the HPA statement said that smoking poses a major risk to adult workers.

It also said secondhand smoke exposure in the workplace increases the risk of diseases like heart failure, stroke and lung cancer for nonsmokers.

In other news, two handbooks on handling pain arising from cancer and non-cancer chronic pain have been published by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with English versions available for foreign caregivers.

FDA commissioned Chi Mei Medical Center to compile the two handbooks, Handbook of NonCancer Chronic Pain Care and Handbook of Cancer Pain Care, covering topics including pain assessment, causes and several kinds of treatment.

The handbooks also cover noncancer pain — pain lasting for more than three months — identifying causes including physical, visceral or neural damage.

Many foreign caregivers in Taiwan assist individuals unable to care for themselves and these caregivers might not understand Chinese, said Wang Jhi-joung (王志中), one of the editors of the handbooks and a chair professor at Chi Mei Medical Center, on Wednesday.

“By publishing an English version [of the handbooks], these people [foreign caregivers] will be able to learn how to take care of themselves and how to care for their care recipients,” Wang added.

The electronic versions of the two handbooks are now available to download from FDA’s official Web site: https://www.fda.gov.tw/ tc/publications.aspx.

When asked about whether a version of the handbooks in Bahasa — the language used by most of the 179,000 Indonesian caregivers in Taiwan — would be available in the future, FDA Deputy Director-General Wang Der-yuan (王德原) said that the option would be considered, but he did not mention a specific plan.