Smoking outside, within five metres of your office door, will soon be illegal and companies found guilty of contravening the rule could face fines of up to R50, 000.

The Department of Health is poised to gazette new smoking laws, including those governing smoking outside, which could come into effect early next year.

Dr Yussuf Saloojee, director of the National Council Against Smoking, said yesterday: "Regulations for smoking within prescribed distances of entrances is coming pretty soon. Exact distances are still to be decided but it will probably be five metres."

But regulating smoking in public areas is not enough for Saloojee.

"Having smoking and non-smoking areas is like have peeing and non-peeing areas in a swimming pool," he said.

Speaking at a conference on cancer in Johannesburg yesterday, Saloojee said the link between smoking and cancer is "so well established that we don't need to do much more work on that".

"The real challenge is what do we do about it?"

Cigarettes, which Saloojee said contained the same products used to make paint stripper, ant poison, vinegar, rocket fuel, mothballs and disinfectant, were linked to an increased risk of contracting 15 types of cancer. They also predispose smokers to medical conditions like impotence, reduced semen quality, and reduced fertility in women.

"But I don't recommend smoking cigarettes as a method of birth control," Saloojee joked.

He said that regulating smoking in the workplace should also apply to domestic workers whose workplace was inside a home.

"There has been a deliberate decision by Parliament to exclude smoking legislation in the home," he said.

During the World Cup, every stadium was a designated non-smoking zone, which Saloojee said was only "partial victory" because right outside stadiums many football fans lit their cigarettes.