Emma Salonga doesn't consider her job difficult, but it could be fatal. Almost every day for the
past nine years, she's served drinks and food to customers in smoky bars and restaurants as one of an estimated 200,000 people working in the local hospitality industry.
It's an industry that's losing 150 people a year to heart disease and lung cancer caused by second-hand smoke, according to recent University of Hong Kong (HKU) research. Customers are not immune either, those who frequent the city's restaurants, bars and clubs being at constant risk from the exhalation of others.
It is Sunday evening and there are eight couples seated at the bar in the establishment where Salonga has worked for the past five years. Every couple have a mobile phone and a packet of cigarettes sitting between them. The air is a blue haze of tobacco smoke, fed by the five tables in the narrow venue, each of which is occupied by at least one smoker.
As the barflies expel their smoke, it drifts across the counter to where Salonga slices limes, mixes drinks and hands out small bowls of peanuts, eight hours a night, seven days a week. 'If it's just cigarettes, I don't notice it, but the moment someone lights up a cigar, even if it's just one person, I can smell it,' she says.
The single mother has set herself a financial target to reach before she leaves Hong Kong. To achieve her goal, she works lunchtimes at a nearby restaurant, which has smoking and non-smoking areas. Having lived in Hong Kong for 10 years, she expects it will be at least another 10 before she can retire to the Philippines to care for her son, now aged seven.
Although Salonga is aware cigarette smoke poses some dangers, like many of her fellow workers, she is uncertain of the exact health risks. Her dream of a long, happy retirement could be clouded by the knowledge cigarette smoke has 20 ways of killing her, including cancers, ulcers and respiratory and circulatory diseases, not to mention 50 ways of making life a misery; the passive smoker faces an increased risk of muscle pain, gum disease, cataracts, polyps and depression, according to British group Action on Smoking and Health.