The Bogus 'Science' of Secondhand Smoke

[almaty 19]

Well I never thought I would be in the position of agreeing with Steven and disagreeing with Gary, but life is full of surprizes.

you, my friend, are becoming right thinking

[peejay 327]

Disease or not...it was a welcomed change when smoking was finally banned indoors at my workplace.

Science or not...it's a no brainer that breathing fresh air vs. breathing smoke is what nature intended for the human lung. Hence...this is why my eyes water, my sinuses clog up, and my throat burns when exposed to smoke.

I can avoid smokey casinos and bar rooms...I can't avoid work.

[GaryC 7]

You're a riot, Gary.

Just because he works for someone that has a vested interest in the subject does not discredit him. He is a doctor and his points are correct. I am not saying that second hand smoke is good for you and it very well may be as dangerous as everyone thinks but lets not base our actions on hysteria and personal bias and use instead real science.

Pot, meet kettle.

Gary, his affiliations make ALL the difference. I can't believe you're defending this man...he's a tobacco lobbyist who sold his soul to the tobacco industry. Do you have a short memory or do you recall that it was tobacco industry scientists who for years reported to the public that smoking was not dangerous to your health. When making a professional scientific opinion about something, conflict of interest DOES make a difference, regardless of whether you want to fess up to that or not.

I guess I will keep repeating this until it sinks in. Just because he works for someone that has a vested interest in the outcome does not make everything he says wrong. The points he makes are worth looking at. There has been NO study that can say there is a direct link between second hand smoke and disease. We should base our actions on facts and not on hysteria.

Lets make a comparison here. You claim that global warming is real. So does that mean that any scientist that has a vested interest in reducing CO2 be discredited? If a scientist that has some connection to alternate energy be discredited from making any point?

All I want is to stick to facts and science rather than hysteria and conjecture.

[garya505 2]

Well I never thought I would be in the position of agreeing with Steven and disagreeing with Gary, but life is full of surprizes.

you, my friend, are becoming right thinking

Don't hold your breath on that one.

[GaryC 7]

Disease or not...it was a welcomed change when smoking was finally banned indoors at my workplace.

Science or not...it's a no brainer that breathing fresh air vs. breathing smoke is what nature intended for the human lung. Hence...this is why my eyes water, my sinuses clog up, and my throat burns when exposed to smoke.

I can avoid smokey casinos and bar rooms...I can't avoid work.

Trust me, it would make my life so much easier if smoking was banned in all public places. When I am at home I have no problems at all not smoking. When I am at work I am constantly standing next to a smoker. The cravings are overwhelming sometimes. But I just want our actions based on real science and not conjecture when we are going to take away someones freedoms for the common good.

[peezey 0]

Secondhand Smoke Fact Sheet

August 2006

Secondhand smoke, also know as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette, pipe or cigar and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers. It is involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers, lingers in the air hours after cigarettes have been extinguished and can cause or exacerbate a wide range of adverse health effects, including cancer, respiratory infections, and asthma.1

Secondhand smoke has been classified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a known cause of cancer in humans (Group A carcinogen).2

Secondhand smoke exposure causes disease and premature death in children and adults who do not smoke. Secondhand smoke contains hundreds of chemicals known to be toxic or carcinogenic, including formaldehyde, benzene, vinyl chloride, arsenic ammonia and hydrogen cyanide.3

Secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 22,700-69,600 heart disease deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year.4

A study found that nonsmokers exposed to environmental smoke were 25 percent more likely to have coronary heart diseases compared to nonsmokers not exposed to smoke.5

Nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke at work are at increased risk for adverse health effects. Levels of ETS in restaurants and bars were found to be 2 to 5 times higher than in residences with smokers and 2 to 6 times higher than in office workplaces.6

Since 1999, 70 percent of the U.S. workforce worked under a smoke-free policy, ranging from 83.9 percent in Utah to 48.7 percent in Nevada.7 Workplace productivity was increased and absenteeism was decreased among former smokers compared with current smokers.8

Currently, 14 states including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have already passed strong smoke-free air laws.9

As of 2005, nine smoke-free states prohibit smoking in almost all workplaces, including restaurants and bars (CA, CT, DE, ME, MA, NY, RI, VT and WA).10

Secondhand smoke is especially harmful to young children. Secondhand smoke is responsible for between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections in infants and children under 18 months of age, resulting in between 7,500 and 15,000 hospitalizations each year, and causes 1,900 to 2,700 sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) deaths in the United States annually.11

Secondhand smoke exposure may cause buildup of fluid in the middle ear, resulting in 700,000 to 1.6 million physician office visits per year.12

Secondhand smoke can also aggravate symptoms in 400,000 to 1,000,000 children with asthma.13

In the United States, 21 million, or 35 percent of, children live in homes where residents or visitors smoke in the home on a regular basis.14 Approximately 50-75 percent of children in the United States have detectable levels of cotinine, the breakdown product of nicotine in the blood.15

New research indicates that private research conducted by cigarette company Philip Morris in the 1980s showed that secondhand smoke was highly toxic, yet the company suppressed the finding during the next two decades.16

The current Surgeon General's Report concluded that scientific evidence indicates that there is no risk-free level of exposure to second hand smoke. Short exposures to second hand smoke can cause blood platelets to become stickier, damage the lining of blood vessels, decrease coronary flow velocity reserves, and reduce heart rate variability, potentially increasing the risk of heart attack.17

For more information on secondhand smoke, please review the Tobacco Morbidity and Mortality Trend Report as well as our Lung Disease Data publication in the Data and Statistics section of our website, or call the American Lung Association at 1-800-LUNG-USA (1-800-586-4872).

link to sources

[UmmSqueakster 54]

But I just want our actions based on real science and not conjecture when we are going to take away someones freedoms for the common good.

Someone's freedom ends at my windpipe. I would have to say my right to breath trumps their right to smoke.

[GaryC 7]

Secondhand Smoke Fact Sheet

August 2006

Secondhand smoke, also know as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette, pipe or cigar and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers. It is involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers, lingers in the air hours after cigarettes have been extinguished and can cause or exacerbate a wide range of adverse health effects, including cancer, respiratory infections, and asthma.1

Secondhand smoke has been classified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a known cause of cancer in humans (Group A carcinogen).2

Secondhand smoke exposure causes disease and premature death in children and adults who do not smoke. Secondhand smoke contains hundreds of chemicals known to be toxic or carcinogenic, including formaldehyde, benzene, vinyl chloride, arsenic ammonia and hydrogen cyanide.3

Secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 22,700-69,600 heart disease deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year.4

A study found that nonsmokers exposed to environmental smoke were 25 percent more likely to have coronary heart diseases compared to nonsmokers not exposed to smoke.5

Nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke at work are at increased risk for adverse health effects. Levels of ETS in restaurants and bars were found to be 2 to 5 times higher than in residences with smokers and 2 to 6 times higher than in office workplaces.6

Since 1999, 70 percent of the U.S. workforce worked under a smoke-free policy, ranging from 83.9 percent in Utah to 48.7 percent in Nevada.7 Workplace productivity was increased and absenteeism was decreased among former smokers compared with current smokers.8

Currently, 14 states including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have already passed strong smoke-free air laws.9

As of 2005, nine smoke-free states prohibit smoking in almost all workplaces, including restaurants and bars (CA, CT, DE, ME, MA, NY, RI, VT and WA).10

Secondhand smoke is especially harmful to young children. Secondhand smoke is responsible for between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections in infants and children under 18 months of age, resulting in between 7,500 and 15,000 hospitalizations each year, and causes 1,900 to 2,700 sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) deaths in the United States annually.11

Secondhand smoke exposure may cause buildup of fluid in the middle ear, resulting in 700,000 to 1.6 million physician office visits per year.12

Secondhand smoke can also aggravate symptoms in 400,000 to 1,000,000 children with asthma.13

In the United States, 21 million, or 35 percent of, children live in homes where residents or visitors smoke in the home on a regular basis.14 Approximately 50-75 percent of children in the United States have detectable levels of cotinine, the breakdown product of nicotine in the blood.15

New research indicates that private research conducted by cigarette company Philip Morris in the 1980s showed that secondhand smoke was highly toxic, yet the company suppressed the finding during the next two decades.16

The current Surgeon General's Report concluded that scientific evidence indicates that there is no risk-free level of exposure to second hand smoke. Short exposures to second hand smoke can cause blood platelets to become stickier, damage the lining of blood vessels, decrease coronary flow velocity reserves, and reduce heart rate variability, potentially increasing the risk of heart attack.17

For more information on secondhand smoke, please review the Tobacco Morbidity and Mortality Trend Report as well as our Lung Disease Data publication in the Data and Statistics section of our website, or call the American Lung Association at 1-800-LUNG-USA (1-800-586-4872).

link to sources

There is still no unbiased scientific study that proves all this. Just because a lot of people believe it does not make it so. Show the the study that justifies all this.

[almaty 19]

Well I never thought I would be in the position of agreeing with Steven and disagreeing with Gary, but life is full of surprizes.

you, my friend, are becoming right thinking

Don't hold your breath on that one.

[peezey 0]

link to sources

There is still no unbiased scientific study that proves all this. Just because a lot of people believe it does not make it so. Show the the study that justifies all this.

Uh, there are 16 sources, most of which are studies or analyses of studies.

Here are some random examples from the list:

14. Schuster, MA, Franke T, Pham CB. Smoking Patterns of Household Members and Visitors in Homes with Children in United States. Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine. Vol. 156, 2002: 1094-1100.

15. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. America's Children and the Environment: Measures of Contaminants, Body Burdens, and Illnesses. Second Edition. February 2003

5. He, J.; Vupputuri, S.; Allen, K.; et al. Passive Smoking and the Risk of Coronary Heart Disease-A Meta-Analysis of Epidemiologic Studies. New England Journal of Medicine 1999; 340: 920-6.

What this doesn't lack, but yours does, is peer review. All of these studies, reports, and journal abstracts list the number of peers that reviewed the document, plus includes redlined copies of changes made. That's what a professional paper is, compared to your biased propaganda for Big Tobacco.

Example:

The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General was prepared by the Office on Smoking and Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Report was written by 22 national experts who were selected as primary authors. The Report chapters were reviewed by 40 peer reviewers, and the entire Report was reviewed by 30 independent scientists and by lead scientists within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services. Throughout the review process, the Report was revised to address reviewers’ comments.

Edited February 1, 2007 by peezey

[one...two...tree 2,762]

You're a riot, Gary.

Just because he works for someone that has a vested interest in the subject does not discredit him. He is a doctor and his points are correct. I am not saying that second hand smoke is good for you and it very well may be as dangerous as everyone thinks but lets not base our actions on hysteria and personal bias and use instead real science.

Pot, meet kettle.

Gary, his affiliations make ALL the difference. I can't believe you're defending this man...he's a tobacco lobbyist who sold his soul to the tobacco industry. Do you have a short memory or do you recall that it was tobacco industry scientists who for years reported to the public that smoking was not dangerous to your health. When making a professional scientific opinion about something, conflict of interest DOES make a difference, regardless of whether you want to fess up to that or not.

I guess I will keep repeating this until it sinks in. Just because he works for someone that has a vested interest in the outcome does not make everything he says wrong. The points he makes are worth looking at. There has been NO study that can say there is a direct link between second hand smoke and disease. We should base our actions on facts and not on hysteria.

Lets make a comparison here. You claim that global warming is real. So does that mean that any scientist that has a vested interest in reducing CO2 be discredited? If a scientist that has some connection to alternate energy be discredited from making any point?

All I want is to stick to facts and science rather than hysteria and conjecture.

I've never heard of it being non-issue in legal matters, Gary. Perhaps you could point me in the direction of a case in law where such conflict of interest didn't matter? I can't believe that you don't see how easily industry hoodwinks people like you, who have little understanding of science into dismissing science. It's very predictable to see that if you don't understand something, you simply become a skeptic.

As to studies on second hand smoke...

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded in its 2002 Monograph on tobacco smoke and second-hand smoke that that "there is sufficient evidence that involuntary smoking (exposure to second-hand or 'environmental' tobacco smoke) causes lung cancer in humans” and makes the overall evaluation that “Involuntary smoking (exposure to secondhand or 'environmental' tobacco smoke) is carcinogenic to humans (Group 1)."

As for evidence of the tobacco industry deliberately giving out disinformation about second hand smoke, I give you give you The British Medical Journal...

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/reprint/bmjusa.03070002v1.pdf

The article by Enstrom and Kabat (p 369) is the latest in a long series of publications funded by the tobacco industry that report little or no relationship between environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and disease.1 The current study has an aura of legitimacy because it is drawn from the American Cancer Society (ACS) Cancer Prevention Study I (CPS-I), a landmark prospective study of the hazards of active smoking,2 and because the analyses are based on nearly 40 years of data. Despite these apparent strengths, the study by Enstrom and Kabat is uninformative and its conclusions are exaggerated.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Decades of real science has shown that there is nothing in second hand smoke that isn't carcinogenic or toxic.

As to what extent it affects people - of course there are no guarantees that it WILL make a person sick, and its all very obvious dependent on the amount of exposure and indeed other aspects of an individuals lifestyle.

I mean... what's being suggested here - that smoking should be allowed back into public places because breathing in 2nd hand smoke isn't that bad for you and that people shouldn't find it inconsiderate and socially distasteful.

[garya505 2]

Disease or not...it was a welcomed change when smoking was finally banned indoors at my workplace.

Science or not...it's a no brainer that breathing fresh air vs. breathing smoke is what nature intended for the human lung. Hence...this is why my eyes water, my sinuses clog up, and my throat burns when exposed to smoke.

I can avoid smokey casinos and bar rooms...I can't avoid work.

Trust me, it would make my life so much easier if smoking was banned in all public places. When I am at home I have no problems at all not smoking. When I am at work I am constantly standing next to a smoker. The cravings are overwhelming sometimes. But I just want our actions based on real science and not conjecture when we are going to take away someones freedoms for the common good.

Even if the studies are suspect or may be inconclusive at this time, common sense and what we know about breathing all kinds of foriegn substances tells me it's bad for my health, so while people are perfectly free to smoke all they want, they shouldn't have the right to force me to breath it.

[Alex+R 0]

Decades of real science has shown that there is nothing in second hand smoke that isn't carcinogenic or toxic.

As to what extent it affects people - of course there are no guarantees that it WILL make a person sick, and its all very obvious dependent on the amount of exposure and indeed other aspects of an individuals lifestyle.

I mean... what's being suggested here - that smoking should be allowed back into public places because breathing in 2nd hand smoke isn't that bad for you and that people shouldn't find it inconsiderate and socially distasteful.

And then more people feel comfortable smoking, it's less taboo, and the author's employers make more money. But that has nothing to do with his ignoring of actual studies, of course.... The studies he cites are faulty, but Gary, that's not every study ever done. Think about this article critically! Please!

[Jenn! 918]

Decades of real science has shown that there is nothing in second hand smoke that isn't carcinogenic or toxic.

As to what extent it affects people - of course there are no guarantees that it WILL make a person sick, and its all very obvious dependent on the amount of exposure and indeed other aspects of an individuals lifestyle.

I mean... what's being suggested here - that smoking should be allowed back into public places because breathing in 2nd hand smoke isn't that bad for you and that people shouldn't find it inconsiderate and socially distasteful.

Well, if we can't say conclusively that secondhand smoke makes people sick, what makes it any different than, say, strong perfume, or BO for that matter?