Anti-tobacco forces are gearing up for another effort to extend the state's smoking ban to all Oregon workplaces, and area bar and restaurant employees are helping them make their case.

A study conducted last year on the effects of secondhand tobacco smoke on bar and restaurant employees involved 31 workers from Corvallis, Philomath and Eugene - among a handful of Oregon cities that ban smoking in all work environments - as a control group.

Researchers compared them with 59 hospitality industry workers in other Oregon and Washington communities. All the workers in the study, funded by $100,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, were nonsmokers.

Although Washington has since passed a statewide workplace smoking ban, Oregon's law still exempts bars, restaurants with lounges, bingo halls and bowling alleys from restrictions on lighting up at work.

The study, led by Michael Stark of the Multnomah County Health Department, measured the amount of a chemical compound called NNK in the workers' bodies after their shift. NNK is closely associated with lung cancer in smokers.

Stark and his fellow researchers found workers in smoke-free Corvallis, Philomath and Eugene establishments were much less likely to harbor the cancer-causing compound.

According to the study, almost four out of five nonsmoking hospitality workers exposed to secondhand smoke on the job showed traces of NNK. That was about twice the rate among employees at smoke-free eating and drinking places.

"What we have shown," Stark said, "is that nonsmoking workers exposed in the workplace are much more likely to have a deadly cancer-causing chemical in their bodies that can only come from secondhand smoke."

The study concludes that "policy makers and the public should make sure that all workers, including restaurant and bar workers, are protected against cancer-causing secondhand smoke exposure in indoor workplaces."

That would probably be just fine with Corvallis waitress Jennifer Kearney, who works at Tommy's 4th Street Bar & Grill. Even though she's an occasional smoker herself, the 36-year-old considers herself a beneficiary of the city's ban on smoking in bars and restaurants.

"I would much rather work in a nonsmoking environment because then I don't have from my hair all the way down to my underwear smelling like smoke," she said. "I don't like emptying ashtrays and having trash cans catch on fire."

Stark's team is writing up the results of the study for publication and plans to submit it to a peer-reviewed journal within a month or so.

The study's appearance could lend weight to renewed efforts to extend Oregon's ban on smoking at work.

"Mike Stark's study is very exciting because it's Oregon data," said Tabithia Engle of the Tobacco Free Coalition of Oregon.

The group is already seeking sponsors for a bill to close the loopholes in the state's workplace smoking ban when lawmakers reconvene in Salem in 2007.

"Between now and January, that's what we're working on," Engle said.

"We plan to go to the Legislature and strongly encourage our legislators to finally make Oregon smoke-free."

That push likely will face stiff opposition from the 3,000-member Oregon Restaurant Association, which helped defeat a similar coalition-backed bill in the 2005 Legislature. The ORA also led a successful fight in 2001 to place a moratorium on additional local smoking bans such as those in Corvallis and Philomath.

Bill Perry, the restaurant group's chief lobbyist, told the Gazette-Times in an interview last year that his group opposes a smoking ban in bars and restaurants because tobacco is a legal product.

"I don't think it surprises anybody that smoking's not good for you," Perry said at the time. "But we're in the hospitality industry, so we service basically everybody. If it's a legal product, (shouldn't) they have someplace to go where they can participate in a legal product?"

Even though the 2005 bill died, Engle said she thinks momentum is building for a change.

Thirteen states - including Oregon's neighbors in Washington and California - have already passed broad smoking bans, she noted. The District of Columbia has also outlawed lighting up at work, and a similar ban recently passed by the Colorado Legislature is awaiting the governor's signature.

"There's kind of a bandwagon right now," Engle said. "It's time for our legislators to realize this is the wave and we should get on it."

Bennett Hall is the business editor for the Gazette-Times. He can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.