Looking after our health is very important nowadays, not just because the economy makes it hard to be sick but also because a lot of chemicals are in the air and the food we eat that the risks of contacting sickness is higher. This is the reason some apartment complexes and condos are now banning tenants from smoking – not just in the common areas but in their own units as well. Tenants in some apartment complexes and condos where smoking are permitted are now also asking for the same protection from secondhand smoke.

As Center for Tobacco Regulation, Litigation and Advocacy at the University of Maryland Law School deputy director Rita Turner explained, people are starting to realize that smoke is not contained in a unit. As buildings “breathe”, smoke seeps from one unit to the next. And cigarette smoke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, may cause lung cancer, heart disease, asthma, respiratory infection, sudden infant death syndrome, and ear infection.

The risks that are being connected to cigarette smoking has then led apartment developers to banning smoking both in common spaces and individual apartments.

A notice from the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued last year urged public housing authorities to consider no smoking policies. Many have heeded the call. Even private developers are starting to follow suit.

Alaire in Rockville, Maryland advertised the following green features: solar-powered trash compactor, use of recycled soda bottles for plants, saline swimming pool without chlorine chemicals, and a smoking ban. So far, it has attracted more tenants than detracted them.

Leases come with a nuisance clause that states a tenant can do anything as long as it is not bothersome to other tenants. Some say that if excessive noise is considered in this clause, then so should secondhand smoke.

Smokers, though, are crying foul claiming they also have a right to do what they want to do. They contest that apartment owners do have the right to implement this, as long as they state it in the leases. They, however, say that a complete government policy would be unfair.