London - It is an issue restaurants and diners might have thought was consigned to the past with bans on smoking in public.
But now electronic cigarettes are creating an unexpected problem in eating establishments.
The vapour given off by the battery-operated devices, which look like normal cigarettes, appears to be causing discomfort among non-smoking diners.
Bruce Poole, the chef-proprietor of the exclusive Chez Bruce in Wandsworth, south west London, even considered banning them in his Michelin-starred restaurant.
“We weren’t particularly happy about this when it happened for the first time quite recently, because [the e-cigarette] looked real and even gave off an admittedly odourless vapour,” he said.
“We chose to do nothing but it caused a few raised eyebrows”.
Fellow restaurateurs around the country will be facing the same quandary as more and more diners become brave enough to “light up” indoors.
A survey by Action on Smoking and Health says 700 000 people in the UK used e-cigarettes last year, with the figure expected to cross the one million barrier this year.
E-cigarettes were invented in China in 2003 and are aimed at giving a similar sensation to smoking a cigarette, but without the health problems. They contain liquid nicotine, which is turned into a vapour inhaled by the user.
They do not contain tobacco and other toxins, such as tar, found in cigarettes, but there is so far little information about possible side effects.
France said earlier this year that it might become the first to include e-cigarettes in the public smoking ban. - Daily Mail