Factsheet No smoking at Sporting Grounds
DATE – 2nd August 2004
SUBJECT – Smoking
Summary of Procedures
Environmental tobacco smoke is a potential health risk and there is now sufficient evidence that passive smoking (the involuntary inhalation of side-stream and second-hand tobacco smoke) increases the risk of at least some diseases, particularly disorders and diseases of the respiratory system.
Not only do players who smoke reduce the physical level at which their bodies can perform, they are also promoting a product which is hazardous to health and in conflict with the image of sport.
To highlight these facts, FIFA have not accepted any advertising from sponsors in the tobacco industry since 1986.
The effects of smoking are stated below:
- Nicotine is a stimulant drug that acts upon the central nervous system and is highly toxic. Nicotine is twice as deadly as arsenic and at least four times more lethal that cyanide. If the total nicotine content of one to two days of smoking was consumed in one dose it would cause death in a matter of minutes.
- Inhaled smoke from a cigarette contains carbon monoxide, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, nicotine, toluene, phenol and benzpyrene.
- A significant aspect with smoking is that non-smoking participants are subject to side stream smoke, which contains all of the above ingredients plus a number of additional gases and poisons that are not normally inhaled by the smoker due to the cigarette filter. These gases include formaldehyde, acrolein, vinylpyridine, naphthalene and napthylamine.
- The carbon monoxide from a cigarette is rapidly absorbed in the blood stream in preference to oxygen and therefore reduces the amount of oxygen that can be carried by the red corpuscles. The tar in a cigarette reduces that elasticity of the air sacs and so restricts the volume of oxygen that can actually attempt to enter the blood stream.
- Smoking also increases the heart rate whilst at the same time reducing the quantity of blood flow by causing the elevation of players blood pressure.
Policy Application
- The banning of smoking by players for the duration of the match in which he or she is participating, and which is under the control of Football NSW, or any of its Members or affiliates, and;
- The banning of smoking by staff, officials, players, referees and volunteers in technical areas, access ways to and from the field of play, canteen servery and preparation areas, dressing rooms, change rooms and medical rooms. It is up to local Associations and Clubs to impose their own rules regarding smoking within their clubhouse.
ROBERT WADDELL,
Chief Executive Officer.