A study carried out at six primary schools in Olot has detected the presence of environmental nicotine around the schools and, in four kits, above the Quantitative Limit (LQ) validated by the laboratory.
Despite the fact that the number of people who smoke is low and the majority do so before the departure of the students, the analysis carried out by technicians from the Public Health Agency of Catalonia and the Consorci de Medi Ambient i Salut Pública de la Garrotxa shows that it is necessary to adopt measures to ensure that the environment of the schools is “100% smoke-free”.
Six primary schools, teaching staff and families have participated in this study formed by the information campaign ‘Entorn sense fum’. To prevent the initiation of tobacco use among the child and youth population of Olot, as well as to protect them from exposure to environmental smoke, the Olot City Council plenary session on August 27, 2020 unanimously approved to adhere to the project promoted by the Agència of Public Health of Catalonia.
To date, signs have been installed in the city’s 20 educational centers and informative actions have been carried out to raise awareness among students and their families. In this way, the children’s homes, primary schools and secondary schools in the city have signs at the entrances to prevent smoking in the school area.
The ‘Entorn sense fum’ project has had the support of the educational community, professionals, monitors and families, with the desire to move towards denormalizing this practice and reducing the visibility of smoking behaviour. This action is carried out especially in spaces such as the exteriors of schools which, due to the high presence of children, contribute decisively to the role that adults play as modalizers and, in this case, to the perception that children acquire in relation to smoking.
‘Smoke-free environment’ has incorporated a phase of analysis and evaluation of environmental nicotine in the exits of the city’s primary schools. Technicians from the Public Health Agency of Catalonia and the Garrotza Environment and Public Health Consortium have carried out this study to describe and know the environmental pollution derived from tobacco consumption in the surroundings of the Olot schools, thank you to a scholarship from the Catalan Society for the Care and Treatment of Tobacco Consumption (SCATT).
Specifically, they have carried out two control campaigns: one of them before and another after the signaling in six primary education centers. The evaluation consisted of collecting air samples and subsequent analysis to determine the presence of ambient nicotine in the space.
Observational data such as the presence of people smoking, the smell of tobacco or the number of cigarette butts in the environment were also collected, and surveys were carried out on the center’s staff, families and sixth grade students.
The controls were carried out for 30 minutes in front of the school exits, beginning 15 minutes before the departure of the students and ending 15 minutes later. According to the observations made, 8% of the people waiting at the children’s exit were smoking when there were ten minutes to go before class ended. In contrast, only 1% did so at a time when the students were collected.
On the other hand, in relation to the presence of cigarette butts, they located them in the surroundings of all the centers, from a minimum of 13 to a maximum of 122, and 68% of the students surveyed claimed to have seen people throwing them to the ground.
Regarding the presence of environmental nicotine, in four of the six entrances to the sampled schools, hot flashes were detected above the Quantitative Limit validated by the laboratory. In relation to the responses to the surveys, it is necessary to highlight that 61% of the sixth-year students stated that they had seen someone smoke in the school environment during the last school year and 93% of the students assured that smoking is harmful to them. health. However, a quarter believe that smoking does not harm people around smokers.
On the other hand, the adults surveyed consider that the ‘Entorn sense fum’ campaign can be useful to modify some behaviors of smokers and a small percentage knew someone who had reduced consumption or quit smoking thanks to the initiative.
32% of the family members and 11% of the center staff acknowledge that their perception of risk has changed after the project and practically all those surveyed believe that smoking should be prohibited around the school.
As any exposure to tobacco smoke is not without risk, Olot stresses that it is necessary to continue promoting initiatives to reduce the presence of smokers and waste, to achieve 100% smoke-free environments. In addition, they demand legislative changes that allow to regulate the consumption of tobacco when leaving schools and to maintain awareness actions in different environments over time to consider this problem in the entire population.
Currently, the Tobacco Law does not consider the prohibition of smoking in the immediate access or on the surrounding sidewalks of educational centers for minors, but it does, for example, in playgrounds or in the immediate access to university centers.
According to the data analyzed in 2019, the prevalence of tobacco use in the population aged 15 and over in Catalonia was 23.9% and 8.3% were exposed to environmental tobacco smoke in their homes.
In the Girona Health Region, the data is above the median in 23.5% of the population, while in La Garrotxa, according to the data from the “Qüestionari sobre tabac, alcohol i altres druges”, 60 7.7% of young people older than 13 years had smoked at least once in their lives and 15.1% were daily smokers.
According to data from the Department of Health, in the last ten years the initiation of tobacco consumption has progressed, hence the need to prevent and avoid the initiation of tobacco consumption in adolescence.
Olot City Council, in coordination with the rest of the entities that form part of the Garrotxa Sense Fum commission, is working on new initiatives that make it possible to raise awareness among the population of the importance of not starting to smoke for health or, in the event of arriving too fast, how to learn to leave it.
