It may not be nice but it is not a health hazard.
Listen, smoking almost killed me, it may kill me yet, I stopped smoking 3.5 years ago and I am somewhat of a passionate anti-smoker. I despise smoking.
Yet for those who want to play Russian Roulette with a nicotine hit I can sympathise. Smokers really are being persecuted a little too hard imo. Los Angeles even bans smoking in the open air which to my mind is ridiculous.
But the topic here is warranties being void through nicotine stains. The general public consensus is smoking is bad, it's possibly the new taboo, the new Antichrist but I don't think a light coating of nicotine is going to affect a machine's performance or pose a health hazard to anybody working on it. Will the nicotine leap from the machine and fly up the technician's nostrils? I don't think so.
If a machine resides in a kitchen then a light coating of airborne cooking oil may affect performance but not cigarette smoke, no.
If you ask me, it's just another excuse by a big company to renege on their warranty.
By the way, just to make my stance clear, when you're strapped back and your head is clamped to the bench and the radiation machine beams in on you, you will wonder 'How could I have been so stupid to have ever smoked?'
Smoking is a bigger health hazard than riding without a seatbelt, falling without a reserve chute, working in a nuclear power station without monitoring and walking a tightrope across a pitfull of alligators without a safety net.
They will tell you of lung cancer.
What's not often mentioned is you may lose your whole voice box, your tongue may be amputated and you may have to spend the rest of your life being fed through a tube inserted through your stomach wall.
Which kinda makes dying through your lungs being eaten by disease almost welcome in comparison.
If you smoke - don't. Please.
