Tenant Information

As a tenant in a rental property, you have the right to live free of a significant cause of illness in the home and a major cause of preventable death in the United States: secondhand smoke.

Smokers are not the only people affected by tobacco smoke. There is no safe amount of secondhand smoke. Even occasional exposure can significantly increase your health risks. For every eight smokers who die, one nonsmoker dies with them from secondhand smoke exposure.

Did you know?
There are over 4,000 identifiable chemicals in cigarette smoke, 200 of which are poisons and 40 carcinogens - chemicals which are known to cause cancer.

More Secondhand Smoke Facts

It is a Group A carcinogen -- a substance known to cause cancer in humans for which there is no safe level of exposure.

Secondhand smoke is the third leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. It kills approximately 53,000 nonsmokers each year.

In Nebraska, approximately 220 to 390 adults, children and infants die each year from others who smoke (secondhand smoke and pregnancy smoking).

More than 15 million U.S. children are exposed to secondhand smoke at home. Each year, secondhand smoke in the United States is linked to:

1. 300,000 cases of infant respiratory infection.
2. 26,000 new cases of asthma and
3. One million exacerbated cases of asthma in children.

Additionally, up to 58% of all deaths due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) are linked to secondhand smoke exposure.

Secondhand smoke cannot be controlled by ventilation, air cleaning or the separation of smokers from non-smokers. The only solution to this problem is to make buildings smoke-free.

A number of public opinion surveys have found that a significant majority of tenants support smoke-free apartment policies.

You can also find smoke-free apartment buildings in the Smoke-Free Apartment Listing