Each year 900 office workers, 165 bar staff and 145 factory workers die from breathing in others’ tobacco smoke, a report, A Killer on the Loose, for the TUC, the anti-smoking group ASH, and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, said yesterday.

The author, James Repace, said that passive smoking at work killed three times as many people as workplace accidents. He said: “More people died in 2002 from passive smoking at work in the UK than were killed by the Great London smog of 1952. This study shows that previous research has seriously underestimated the number.”

At a conference today the organisations will call on the Government to implement a binding code of practice for workplace smoking, proposed more than two years ago by the Health and Safety Commission. The code of practice clarifies how existing health and safety law applies to passive smoking, and would effectively ban smoking from the vast majority of workplaces.

The UK lags behind other countries in implementing such bans and lawyers at the conference will warn that employers could face lawsuits if they fail to protect staff.

Brendan Barber, General Secretary-elect of the TUC, said: “Ministers should stop defending the fug-filled snugs of Britain’s pubs, which are proving fatal for bar staff and putting off customers.”

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