Vancouver -- Doug Saunders's jokey column doesn't include a reason why unprotected exposure to a Class A carcinogen should be a condition of anyone's employment (First They Came For The Smokers . . . -- June 5).

The Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board accepted Heather Crowe's claim for workplace injury from secondhand smoke: a never-smoker who worked in smoky restaurants, Ms. Crowe has a fist-sized inoperable lung tumour.

Since 1986, the WSIB reports, five claims have been filed for health effects from secondhand smoke, and three have been accepted. Marlene Sharp beat tobacco lawyers at their own game when she was able to prove in an Australian court her laryngeal cancer was due to workplace exposure of other people's smoke in 2001.

If either of these ladies were Mr. Saunders's mother/niece/sister/wife/daughter, his proposed Union of Pro-Smoking Non-Smokers would assume a very different perspective.