By MARCUS OSCARSSON

Last updated at 16:23 23 August 2007

A Swedish woman has been banned from smoking in her own back garden because her neighbour is allergic to cigarette smoke.

The cigarette row has rocked the city of Akarpin in southern Sweden, where the Environment Court banned Ingela Olofsson from smoking in her yard after hearing that her neighbour - Michael Berggren, a lawyer - has to wear an oxygen mask when walking from the house to the car.

"This is insane," Olofsson said.

The row started when the lawyer bought the house next to Olofsson three years ago. Berggren says that he initially asked her to smoke somewhere else than next to his garden.

But the woman did not stop smoking, and the bemused city has watched as the friendly neighbourhood atmosphere degenerated into a catfight.

The neighbours stopped talking to each other and recently all the communication between them has occurred via their legal representatives - and the media.

"We have no other choice to enter or exit our house but passing the garden path that faces your house and we can therefore no longer accept that you poison our lives with your disgusting and unhealthy tobacco smoke," the lawyer wrote in an angry letter to Olofsson.

"The best thing is for you to quit," he added.

Olofsson also received a letter from Berggren's legal representative who informed her that the lawyer "had not been able to open the windows in two years due to the awful smell coming from the neighbour's yard produced by the tobacco smoke".

Berggren even claimed that he was forced to wear an oxygen mask when walking from the house to his car in the mornings and the evenings. He said that without the mask it took only seconds for the effects of the smoke to take hold, leaving him struggling for breath.

Surprised neighbours and friends have spotted Berggren walking with the oxygen mask in his own garden several times a day. "He is walking with the mask regardless if I smoke or not," Olofsson said.

"I was provoked by his actions, but now I do not care anymore."

The smoker was reported to the authorities and last week representatives from the Environment Court of south Sweden arrived in order to inspect the situation.

But Olofsson refused to participate. "I did not believe it made any sense at all. What were they supposed to do here? This is so ridiculous," she said.

The court representatives inspected Berggren's yard and established that it was fully possible to see Olofsson's yard when standing there.

So the action - which Olofsson had believed was just a bad joke - turned serious, with the Environment Court ruling she could not smoke in major parts of her yard.

"This is making me furious," she complained.

Since Norway banned smoking in all public facilities in June 2004, Sweden and Denmark have followed with similar bans.