"I can definitely notice the difference since the smoking ban," said Bekah Arndt, 27, manager of the Milky Way bar in Jamaica Plain and a dance student. "I don't get winded as easily. I didn't know how much the smoke bothered me until I had been out of it for a while."

According to the study, the smoking ban has lowered levels of cancer-causing air pollutants in the city's bars by up to 95 percent. Prior to the ban, workers were exposed to four times the level of secondhand smoke allowed by federal regulations.

The study, which was conducted by researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine for the Massachusetts Coalition for a Healthy Future, measured the air quality in six Boston bars in April and then again in October, six months after the ban had been implemented.

"The bottom line is that nearly all of the indoor pollution was due to secondhand smoke, and the risk of disease from air pollution has been lowered 90 to 95 percent," said study author James Repace, a physicist and visiting professor at Tufts University School of Medicine.

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