DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) — Irish pub workers are healthier and exposed to far fewer cancer-causing substances because of the three-year-old ban on smoking in work places, according to a report published yesterday.The study, in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, involved testing 73 workers in 42 pubs both before and after the introduction of the March 2004 ban in Ireland — the first country to impose a nationwide ban.

The report found that Irish workers today were being exposed to tobacco smoke an average of 25 minutes a week, compared to 40 hours before — a 99 percent decline. It said the level of air pollution in pubs has declined 83 percent, the level of airborne carcinogens 80 percent, with traffic-generated pollution the major remaining threat to respiratory health.

The study, which was sponsored by cancer and anti-smoking organisations in Ireland, offered no margin of error for its findings.

The ban was proved surprisingly popular in Ireland, a country of 4.2 million with more than 10,000 pubs, where about a third of adults smoke.

Several European nations have imposed national bans or lesser restrictions on smoking since Ireland’s move, which was inspired by anti-smoking crackdowns in dozens of US cities, most prominently New York.

In the neighbouring United Kingdom, workplace smoking bans have been in place in Scotland for a year and in Wales for two weeks, and will come into force in Northern Ireland April 30 and England July 1.