Smoking has been banned in most public places in Lexington for more than a decade, but the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department is asking child care centers to go a step further.
By now the phrase “second-hand smoke” is part of the general lexicon, but you may not have heard of “third-hand smoke.”
"It's the smoke that's left behind in places where people have previously smoked, and it falls on people's hair and clothing," says Angela Brumley-Shelton, tobacco coordinator for the health department.
She’s leading the charge to get local child care centers to go what’s called 100% smoke-free, meaning employees would be barred from taking smoke breaks or arriving at work smelling of smoke.
"What happens when somebody has smoked or has been where somebody is smoking and then picks up a small child or takes care of a child goes into a child care center, the children who are in care, especially the very young children, are exposed to all of the toxins that are in the cigarette," she says.
Brumley-Shelton adds that some communities in Maine and California are also adding scent-free rules meant to keep workers from covering up the smoke smell with strong colognes or perfumes, which she says also contain harmful chemicals.
"This is very forward thinking for right now, but none of the tobacco states are doing this," she says. "This is just something that my department and my team decided that we really wanted to pursue, and we went after a couple of grants to do this."
For now, health officials are only looking to encourage voluntary participation and she says her department hasn’t decided yet whether to press for any amendments to Lexington’s smoke-free law.