Jean Heffelfinger, 53, has been smoking since she was 16. She knows it's bad for her, she said, "but I don't want somebody to force me to quit because of where I live."



Heffelfinger recently got a letter from the property management firm at the Woodlayne Court apartments in Middletown where she lives imposing a no smoking policy beginning March 1 everywhere in the building, including inside individual apartments. Existing tenants will face the ban at the end of their leases. Heffelfinger has a month to month lease.

"I've lived there five and a half years. I mind my own business," Heffelfinger said. "I don't think it's right I have to move out because I choose to smoke a cigarette."

According to the letter from Pennrose Management Company, secondhand smoke is a health hazard and can travel through the plumbing, electrical system, cabinets, closet, fireplaces and ventilation systems.

It says a tenant can be evicted for creating a "nuisance" and "when tobacco smoke travels from one unit to another or from outside into another unit, it is a nuisance."



Rita Dallago, executive director of the Pennsylvania Residential Owners Association which represents more than 7,000 landlords and property managers in the state, said banning smoking in apartment complexes is a growing trend. It's hard for a landlord to get out the smell of tobacco after a smoker leaves, she said.

Jim Bergman, head of the Smoke-Free Environments Law Project in Michigan, said it is legal for landlords to ban smoking even though it was not in the original lease as long as they give adequate notice of the change.

He pointed to the 2006 surgeon general's report that said there is no safe level of tobacco smoke, and secondhand smoke can increase the risk of lung cancer, asthma, bronchitis and emphysema, especially among the elderly, ill and children.

Michael McFadden of Philadelphia, a smokers' rights advocate and author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains," said the move to ban smoking inside private homes "has been pushed by the more radical anti-smoking groups for about ten years now."

"Even if you accept the EPA figures on the dangers of secondhand smoke, the increased risk is about one extra chance in 1000 after 40 years of being in a room with smokers," he said. "To claim any risk at all from a separate apartment is silliness."