CDC: Apartment Residents More Likely To Be Smokers

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has conducted the first national study documenting comparisons between smoking and housing status.

Researchers found that 20 percent of adults in multi-unit buildings smoked, compared to 14 percent of adults in single family homes.

“That’s why we work so hard to develop voluntary smoke free policies in apartment complexes because you’re really pretty vulnerable if you live in an apartment and you keep a smoke free policy in your own quarters,” said Dona Wininsky of the American Lung Association of Wisconsin.

Even if apartment dwellers didn’t smoke in their own unit, or allow others to, 34 percent were exposed to secondhand smoke from their neighbors, according to the study.

More than 17 percent of adults in Wisconsin smoke, according to the most recent data from 2014.