Burbank Airport Bans Smoking in Most Areas : Cigarettes: The action, which takes effect Nov. 1, is prompted by complaints from passengers and airline managers.

Responding to complaints by passengers and airline representatives, the Burbank Airport Authority voted unanimously Monday to ban smoking in all terminal areas except restaurants and lounges.

The ban, which will take effect Nov. 1, brings the airport in line with a growing number of facilities across the country that have prohibited smoking, including John Wayne Airport in Orange County, San Jose International, San Francisco International and Stapleton Airport in Denver.

Los Angeles International allows smoking in designated areas throughout the terminals.

“It’s a trend that is sweeping the country,” said Kevin Goebel, manager of legislative programs for the Berkeley group Americans for Non-Smokers Rights.

The airport now allows smoking only in designated areas throughout the terminal.

But in some areas, smoking and nonsmoking areas are not separated and are distinguishable only by ashtrays and “No Smoking” signs.

The call for a ban came from airline managers and passengers, who complained of long, narrow waiting areas where smoke stagnates and floats across to the nonsmoking area, airport spokeswoman Elly Mixsell said.

Mixsell said that since the authority began to consider the ban, the airport has received telephone calls from only two people opposed to the ban.

But airport officials have received many letters and calls from passengers complaining of smoke in terminals, she said.

“There are going to be some people who will not be happy with it, but people will be allowed to smoke in the restaurants and lounges,” she said.

The ban will be publicized in the terminals by announcements over the public-address system and by signs around the airport.

Goebel said a growing number of airports have banned smoking or are considering a smoking ban because of new evidence on the dangers of secondhand smoke.

An international team of researchers performed autopsies on 30 nonsmoking women and found that the lungs of smokers’ wives contained a significantly higher number of precancerous abnormalities than the lungs of nonsmokers’ wives.

The study results, reported this month in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., was touted as the first medical evidence that secondhand smoke can damage lungs of nonsmokers.

But Dave Brenton, editor of the journal of the United Smokers Assn. of America in Kentucky, disputed the findings of such studies, saying no definitive study has been done to conclude that second-hand smoke harms nonsmokers.

He called the smoking bans at airports a “harassment of air travelers.”

Smoking bans are “intended to make smoking while traveling such an inconvenience that people will just give it up,” he said.

Brenton said his organization is urging smokers to avoid flying whenever possible until airlines begin to defend their passengers’ right to smoke.

“I think the airlines have turned their backs on us,” he said.

Greg Golden, station manager for Southwest Airlines Co. at the Burbank Airport, said: “Southwest is really neutral and will cooperate with the airport wherever they want to go.”

But Golden added that the problem of keeping secondhand smoke out of nonsmoking areas is difficult because some terminals are narrow and small, and “it became an issue in trying to separate the smoking from the nonsmoking.”