What do you bring home to your family?

As a union member you bring home a good paycheck. You bring home health benefits. You take care of your family.

Do you also bring home disease and death?

Every day you are exposed to toxic substances on the job. You try to use the proper respirators and other precautions. If your work exposes you to asbestos, lead dust or other hazards you probably change your clothes before going home so that you don’t expose your family to those toxics.

When you confront Lead, Carbon Monoxide, Toluene, and MEK on the job, you know that you should take special precautions. Tobacco contains these very same ingredients. In fact, tobacco smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals — at least 50 of these are carcinogenic.

Tobacco is toxic too!

The Environmental Protection Agency has classified secondhand smoke as a “Group A” carcinogen – the most dangerous category of cancer-causing agent.

That’s why the State Building Trades Council started the BUILT project. We want to protect workers from the hazards of secondhand smoke, and we want to help smokers quit. It all begins with your family.

Tobacco hurts our children

Ear Infections

• Up to 11.1% of all ear infections in children under the age of 3 in California are caused by secondhand smoke.¹

Asthma

• Secondhand smoke causes up to 3,000 new childhood asthma cases in California each year.¹

Respiratory Infections

• Among infants and toddlers under 18 months, secondhand smoke is blamed for up to 36,000 cases of bronchitis and pneumonia in California. ¹

SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome)

• Smoke from parents’ cigarettes is responsible for an estimated 120 cases of sudden infant death syndrome in California. ¹

Kids become smokers

• If you smoke, your children are twice as likely to become smokers as well.²
• When young people start, the nicotine addiction kicks in within 2-3 days, so then they can’t just quit. ³
• More than 80% of smokers want to quit ⁴…but the best way to quit is not to start smoking in the first place.

Benefits of a smoke free home

HEALTHIER CHILDREN – The tobacco companies have not disputed the research that shows the negative health effects that cigarette smoke has on children.

FEWER DOCTOR VISITS – Healthier children mean fewer trips to the doctor and less time off to make those visits.

LOWER HEALTH CARE COSTS – Healthier children means less money for out-of-pocket health costs. By growing up healthier, children will incur lower health care costs in their future.

LESS CHANCE YOUR CHILDREN WILL BECOME SMOKERS – Children of smokers are almost twice as likely to smoke as are children of parents who never smoked. You can avoid passing along a bad habit.

What can you do?

• Don’t smoke in your house.
• Don’t let others smoke in your house.
• Don’t smoke in your car.
• If you smoke – quit! There is a program that can help you.