Little Rock Zoo Goes Smoke Free

The Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas (CTFA) has worked for more than a year to prevent designated smoking areas from becoming a part of the zoo’s proposed smoke-free policy.  The CTFA, along with several other tobacco prevention advocates such as Joe Arnold and Genine Perez-Porch, and the YES Team’s efforts paid off on November 8, 2010. The Little Rock Zoo Board of Governors adopted a smoke free policy for the zoo, abandoning the original proposal to create three designated smoking areas.

Second-hand smoke is the third leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., killing more than 50,000 non-smokers each year. In Arkansas, 510 non-smokers die each year from exposure to second-hand smoke. Even minor exposure to smoke at home, in the car, in a public environment, such as a zoo, can be harmful to the cardiovascular system of healthy children.

A 2007 study released by the American Heart Association in the Circulation:  Journal of the American Heart Association shows that exposure to second-hand smoke can harm the function of the arteries in children, just as other research has found that second-hand smoke harms the function of the arteries in adults.