11. Even the Smell of Cigarettes Changes How We Use Public Spaces

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2012/09/smokers-and-battle-public-space/3423/

Nate Berg, writer at the Atlantic, discusses a recently published study by Qian Hui Tan and claims that an unfavorable scent from a person gives negative impacts on people's perception of them and changes the way public spaced is used around them. To introduce the issue, Berg quotes Bill Hicks, a comedian who pointed out the conflict of non-smokers complaining that "the cigarettes are poisoning the air." Smoking policies of Singapore is used to exemplify segregated areas of smokers and nonsmokers, the cause of cigarette smell in public. The original reason for the segregation was inspired not by "health concerns but by social and aesthetic ones." Berg cites interviews from Tan's research and indicates that smokers are often "made to feel unclean or burdensome on those around them." The ways of trying to reduce this impact on their peers is to eliminate or avoid the cigarette smell by "smoking downwind," "keeping more space from people after smoking," and such. Nonsmokers who were interviewed also asserted that the smell or odor of the cigarette was what bothered them.

Berg's purpose of this article is to inform that the smell can greatly impact one's social image and the attitudes received from the peers in public spaces. He intends this message for his audience of smokers and nonsmokers who use public spaces and implies the advice to maintain clean-smelling personal habits for a better success in the city life.