The Minister for Health should be pleased with research findings on environmental tobacco smoke prepared by three fifth-year students from Kinsale Community College.
Attending the Esat BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, they argue all pubs should be fitted with advanced ventilation systems, but that the smoking ban should also be imposed.
They predict 240 deaths from lung cancer per year per 100,000 people working in environments polluted with tobacco smoke where there is no ventilation.
With ventilation this could be reduced to 60 deaths, and their own best-case venting system could reduce this still further to 30 deaths.
Edward Judge, (16), Yvonne Crowley,(17) and Frances Lordan, (16), built their own test system to study the dynamics of tobacco smoke in enclosed places. "We built a box we are calling a mini environment," explains Edward.
It approximated a room with subfloor, open space and partially closed ceiling space, and the three could experiment with different ventilation rates, venting systems and experimental methods to clear smoke.
They filmed smoke being injected into the "room" to study turbulence and smoke flow through the space. "We could detect where the turbulence occurred and try to reduce it," Yvonne explained.
They also used vaporised ethyl alcohol injected into the room to measure how long the pollution remained given different ventilation systems. "We measured the amount of time it took to clean it away," Frances said. They found that the best system, high-velocity air movement from subfloor to ceiling, was "not very practical".
It needed an air speed of five metres per second, Edward said. "That would create a wind storm in a room," giving 1,000 air changes per hour, but making the space unusable.
Research by Stephen Begley, (16), a fifth-year student from Christian Brothers Abbey Grammar School, Newry, Co Down, also had a health dimension. He decided to look for new types of antibiotics that occur naturally in lichens.
Antibiotic resistance is a significant problem, so the discovery of new antibiotic compounds would be extremely valuable. Stephen learned that some lichens displayed antibiotic properties and decided to find them and measure their effectiveness.
He collected 10 different lichen types harvested from a nearby forest park and tested them against three common bacteria, pitting their performance against conventional penicillin. Each had to be ground up and treated with acetone to derive a liquid that could be used against bacteria growing in sealed dishes.
"Some lichen had antibiotic properties, but they tended to be less effective than penicillin," he said. They might have been less concentrated however and could, in fact, be even more effective.
He used chromatography to find the different chemical fractions of each lichen treatment and tested individual fractions against bacteria. Again these were less effective than pure penicillin, but the size of molecule or concentration could have been a factor, he added.
He believes as a result of a literature search that the active lichen ingredient is usnic acid, a regular constituent in conventional antibiotics. If confirmed, harvesting of lichens for usnic acid could be a valuable activity given a single gram costs €280, he said.