Claims Health Endangered : Worker Sues Cal State Over Cigarette Smoke

Claiming that his health is being undermined and his work ability suffers because of cigarette smoke, a Cal State Fullerton employee is seeking a court order to force the university to strengthen rules against smoking and their enforcement.

“I’ve had it,” David B. McCoy, a music-instrument repair technician at Cal State Fullerton, said in an interview Tuesday. “The policy the university has isn’t enforced. There’s smoke in my working station, and I suffer from asthma and other allergies. My Eustachian tubes in my ears are being stopped up and, since I have to tune pianos, this smoke is affecting my ability to work.”

Cites Legal Guarantee

McCoy, 44, of Costa Mesa, filed a lawsuit Monday in Orange County Superior Court, asserting that a state law passed in 1982 guarantees state workers a smoke-free working environment. McCoy said he thinks his is the first attempt to enforce that state law through the courts. Officials with the state attorney general’s office in Sacramento said Tuesday that they were unaware of any similar lawsuits.

McCoy’s suit asks for a court order forcing the university to formulate and implement a no-smoking policy that will provide him with “an environment free of tobacco smoke at his workstation.” Jerry Keating, director of public affairs at Cal State Fullerton, said Tuesday that the campus has a policy that prohibits smoking in all classrooms, labs, gyms, theaters, restrooms, stairwells and elevators. Keating said the policy allows limited smoking rights in campus offices and eating areas. The current restrictions on smoking, Keating said, were implemented Feb. 17, 1986, but he said the campus has had restrictions on smoking “for many years.”

Keating said enforcement of the university’s smoking policy in the past has been through warnings to offenders.

Sal Rinella, vice president for administration at Cal State Fullerton, said that McCoy’s suit is being handled by university lawyers and that there would be no comment on the legal issues.

McCoy claimed in the interview that Cal State Fullerton’s smoking policy is weak and poorly enforced.

“In the Performing Arts Building, where I work, there’s a lot of smoke because the air is recirculated,” he said, “and professors who smoke in their offices sometimes leave doors open, and the smoke comes out in the halls and into other rooms.”

McCoy said he believes that Cal State Fullerton should restrict smokers to “outer alcoves or lounges where the smoke is directly vented outside.”

McCoy, who has been a Cal State Fullerton employee since 1979, said smoking is unpopular on the campus. He said a campuswide vote last spring showed 72% of the students were opposed to cigarette smoke. Nonetheless, McCoy said, the few smokers on the campus make classroom and office buildings unsafe for the nonsmokers.

In his suit, McCoy claimed that his health “is continuously being endangered and adversely affected.” The suit said cigarette smoke in Cal State Fullerton’s Performing Arts Building has caused him to have “asthmatic wheezing and congestion; severe irritation of eyes, nose and throat; congested Eustachian tubes; bloody nose; dizziness; headaches; increased number of respiratory infections; coughing; gagging; sneezing; earaches; ringing in the ears; sinusitis; nausea; fatigue and anxiety.”

The suit said McCoy has sought, unsuccessfully, through administrative means to get the university to better enforce its smoking rules.