Mall Plans Strict Limit on Smoking : Regulations: South Coast Plaza is one of the first indoor shopping centers to ban tobacco in common areas.

COSTA MESA —  South Coast Plaza on Feb. 1 will become one of the first indoor shopping malls in the nation to ban smoking in common areas.

“This is notable, definitely notable,” said Kevin Goebel, spokesman for Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights in Berkeley. “They’re not the first to (ban tobacco products), . . . but it’s rare enough to be unusual.”

Restaurants at South Coast Plaza and Crystal Court will keep designated smoking areas open, mall spokeswoman Jan Roberts said, noting that few, if any, merchants at the malls now allow customers or employees to smoke inside their stores.

South Coast is eliminating smoking out of “concern for the safety of our customers and employees,” Roberts said. “We’d been considering this for some period of time, but the final impetus was the recent (U.S.) Environmental Protection Agency report” that linked secondhand smoke to lung cancer.

The Jan. 6 EPA report states that passive inhalation of tobacco smoke causes an estimated 3,000 fatal cases of lung cancer each year in the United States. Second-hand smoke is a contributing factor in 53,000 additional deaths each year, according to the group.

Smoking will be allowed only in designated areas near mall entrances. On Jan. 31, mall crews will remove indoor ashtrays and install signs bearing the international symbol for “no smoking.”

Though local ordinances in some cities prohibit smoking at indoor malls, only a handful of retail centers in the United States have voluntarily banned smoking, Goebel said.

Terese Riss of the American Cancer Society in Orange County said, “We expect more and more malls to (ban smoking). . . . It’s all part of keeping the workplace free of secondhand smoke.”