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home > manage your costs > unhealthy choices > understanding unhealthy choices
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Higher Small Business Health Costs: The Smoking Gun |
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Accidents, fires, property damage, and air pollution are just a few of the consequences of smoking in the workplace that can directly affect a company’s bottom line. But, absenteeism, employee deaths, and higher health costs associated with the ill-effects of smoking on the employees who smoke and those who inhale second-hand smoke can be the most damaging. The good news, however, is that you can reduce the risk to your employees and the impact of smoking on your business. |
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Coffin Nails, Cancer-Sticks, and Second-Hand Smoke |
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More than 440,000 Americans die of cigarette smoking-related diseases each year. What is more disturbing about that number, however, is that 38,000 of those deaths are caused by second-hand smoke . While people can argue that they have the right to do whatever they want to their own bodies, smoking is not a “victimless crime.” The smoke that is exhaled into the air by smokers as well as the smoke that enters the air from the tip of a lit cigarette is just as harmful to those unfortunate enough to be near a smoker. Second-hand smoke may actually be more harmful to a non-smoker because the smoke entering the lungs of a smoker has at least been dragged through a filter at the end of a cigarette.
By allowing smoking in your workplace, then, you increase the health-risks of all your employees, not just those who smoke. And, with increased health risks comes higher health insurance premiums. Smoking is an immediate red-flag to insurance underwriters and will almost always trigger the addition of surcharges on a typical health insurance premium. The reason for this is clear. Eight percent of all U.S. health care expenditures are related to smoking. That translates to $3,391 per smoker per year ($1,760 in lost productivity and $1,623 in excess medical expenditures) . |
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Smoking in the workplace costs money, time, and lives. But, you can reduce the risk to your employees and the impact of smoking on your business. |
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