Ten years of a national law covering smoke-free school grounds: a brief review

Poor smoke-free status of airports in a country with a smoke-free goal: New Zealand

BACKGROUND

To survey the smoke-free status of airports in New Zealand (NZ), a country with a smoke-free goal for 2025, and where public indoor areas are required to be smoke-free.

METHODS

A cross-sectional survey of a convenience sample of airports with data collection on smoke-free signage, observed smoking behaviour, cigarette butt litter and designated smoking areas.

RESULTS

A total of 23 airports were surveyed, including all those for the 10 most populous urban areas in NZ (82% of all airports with scheduled flights on the main islands). There were no smoke-free signs found at entrances/exits to the terminal building in 26% of airports, with a mean of 1.7 such signs per entrance/exit. Only one airport had any signage stating that all the grounds were smoke-free. Qualitatively, the signage was often small in size (<15 cm diameter). There was also ambiguity as to what the signage related to (indoors or outdoors). Observed smoking and vaping outside of the main entrances/exits was relatively uncommon, but the great majority of these sites (91%) had discarded cigarette butts present. Most airports (70%) had some form of designated or implied outdoor smoking area, with 38% of these areas being within 10 m distance of a terminal entrance/exit.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite this country having a smoke-free goal, it has largely deficient smoke-free policies at its airports. There is a case to make airport grounds entirely smoke-free as part of an upgrade of the national smoke-free law.

Smokefree signage at children's playgrounds: Field observations and comparison with Google Street View

Background

Although there is global growth in outdoor smokefree areas, little is known about the associated smokefree signage. We aimed to study smokefree signage at playgrounds and to compare field observations with images from Google Street View (GSV).

Methods

We randomly selected playgrounds in 21 contiguous local government areas in the lower North Island of New Zealand, all of which had smokefree playground policies. Field data were collected on smokefree signage along with dog control signage to allow for comparisons. The sensitivity and specificity of using GSV for data collection were calculated.

Results

Out of the 63 playgrounds studied, only 44% (95% CI: 33%–57%) had any smokefree signage within 10 m of the playground equipment. The mean number of such signs was 0.8 per playground (range: 0 to 6). Sign size varied greatly from 42 cm² up to 2880 cm²; but was typically fairly small (median = 600 cm²; ie, as per a 20 × 30 cm rectangle). Qualitatively the dog signs appeared to use clearer images and were less wordy than the smokefree signs.

Most playground equipment (82%), could be seen on GSV, but for these settings the sensitivity for identifying smokefree signs was poor at 16%. Yet specificity was reasonable at 96%.

Conclusions

The presence and quality of smokefree signage was poor in this sample of children’s playgrounds in this developed country setting. There appears to be value in comparing smokefree signage with other types of signage (eg, dog control signage). Google Street View was not a sensitive tool for studying such signage.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s12971-017-0143-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.