Tenants have urged landlords to tighten regulations on environmental pollution caused by smoking in commercial residences, sighting a mix of smokers who have continued to pollute the environment in the name of being able to do what they please given they pay rent.

Environmental pollution is the addition of unwanted chemicals that cause a change to the environment. Examples of environmental pollution are air, water, soil, noise, and light pollution.

Mariya Atimango, a single mother renting in Bukoto, a city in Kampala, has decried that her neighbor smokes and does it openly without minding his surroundings.

According to Atimango, the smoker made it worse when he started sending her young children to buy for him cigarettes, which has prompted them to engage in smoking, and one of her children now steals her money to buy cigarettes.

‘’If it were not for this man smoking and sending my young boys to buy him cigarettes, they wouldn’t be smoking,’’ Atimango said.

In the same neighborhood, Peter Wamboka, another resident, said he has developed respiratory-related diseases since he is a constant passive smoker. He then called on landlords and the government at large to put in regulations that govern smoking in residential areas.

He said landlords should control cigarette pollution in their commercial residences because it poses a great danger to their families for those who stay within, and it endangers the lives of tenants and their families, including their animals (pets).

”Therefore, landlords should put a NO smoking clause in the lease and be willing to enforce it with eviction; this spells it out clearly to a smoker and serves as a reminder to smokers as a way of securing the lives of tenants from danger,” Wamboka said.

Air pollution can directly cause respiratory problems and cancer in humans and animals. Smoking in commercial residences is a popular polluting environment that is continuously causing silent diseases like low-birth-weight babies, lower respiratory illness in infants and toddlers, middle ear disease in kids, asthma attacks, stroke, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), heart disease, and lung cancer.

Smoking in the presence of children of all ages at commercial residences has left many young children getting engaged in smoking at every early stage and lured into wrong activities that endanger their lives, shutting their bright future.