That is a great question and will be in debate for along time.

I see this all the time and it will continue. You’re almost in a no-win situation. I don’t think this will ever change. What is funny is that if you are a non-smoker and you takes breaks like that, there would always be that, “now why his he taking another break?”

I never have had a problem with the guys in the field doing this of course. Now with a new law in the State of Washington workers cannot smoke within 25’ from a public entrance. So this does make the breaks a little bit longer, not by choice of course.

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It gets even worse - there are some university campuses here in the midwest that you can't smoke within the jobsite, and a few where the entire campus is "smoke-free". Can't really enforce it with the students, but they get pissy with staff and contractors!

As a former smoker, I sympathize with both sides. I let smokers and non smokers take the same number of breaks. If we are in a smoking area only jobsite, then the smokers have to wait for the breaks, its only fair.

I'm not one of those "preachy" reformed smokers though.

It's magnified exponentially if you are working in a containment situation. The only thing I think is worse was a couple of months ago we had a couple of guys come in to blast some large seismic mat foundations. The Safety Department didn't know the safe distances that people could smoke when explosives ae on site, so they asked OSHA for a clarification. OSHA came back with a decision that smoking was not allowed from fence to fence on all sides of the site because that delineates the work area. Nobody could smoke on site at all which didn't make too many people happy. The fines start out at $20k per person per incident.

I am a former smoker also. It amazes me how some workers “need” to smoke. When I was working in the field and some of the projects were non-smoking sites, I could live without a cigarette for 8 hours.

My question is how do have of these workers pass “fit test” for their mask? I wasn’t a heavy smoker, but I could barely pass my fit test when doing work.

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I know, I was having difficulty passing the aspiration tests so that was a factor in my quitting.

I once had to fire an asbestos temp from smoking in containment. We had about 5000 square feet under containment doing lead and asbestos removal and I went in to do a spot check, this dude was over behnd some derelict equipment smoking through a hole he had cut in his half face respirator! Apperently he was out on the day they covered volatized lead particles...