"Funny you should ass."
Posted on 11/26/2007 12:08:20 PM PST by crazyshrink
It’s not a smoking gun, but it’s smoking-related, and it’s there in bright medical images: evidence of microscopic structural damage deep in the lungs, caused by secondhand cigarette smoke. For the first time, researchers have identified lung injury to nonsmokers that was long suspected, but not previously detectable with medical imaging tools.
The researchers suggest that their findings may strengthen public health efforts to restrict secondhand smoke.
“We used a special type of magnetic resonance imaging to find these structural changes in the lungs,” said study leader Chengbo Wang, Ph.D., a magnetic resonance physicist in the Department of Radiology at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Almost one-third of nonsmokers who had been exposed to secondhand cigarette smoke for a long time developed these structural changes.” Formerly at the University of Virginia, Wang collaborated with radiology researchers at that institution, where they acquired the MRIs from adult smokers and nonsmokers.
Wang presented the team’s findings in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. Although the participants in the research study were adults, Wang said the results have implications for the 35 percent of American children who live in homes where regular smoking occurs.
The researchers studied 60 adults between ages 41 and 79, 45 of whom had never smoked. The 45 non-smokers were divided into groups with low and high exposure to secondhand smoke; the high-exposure subjects had lived with a smoker for at least 10 years, often during childhood. The 15 current or former smokers formed a positive control group.
The research team prepared an isotope of helium called helium-3 by polarizing it to make it more visible in the MRI. Researchers diluted the helium in nitrogen and had research subjects inhale the mixture. Unlike ordinary MRIs, this MRI machine measured diffusion, the movement of helium atoms, over 1.5 seconds. The helium atoms moved a greater distance than in the lungs of normal subjects, indicating the presence of holes and expanded spaces within the alveoli, tiny sacs within the lungs.
The researchers found that almost one-third of the non-smokers with high exposure to secondhand smoke had structural changes in their lungs similar to those found in the smokers. “We interpreted those changes as early signs of lung damage, representing very mild forms of emphysema,” said Wang. Emphysema, a lung disease that is a major cause of death in the U.S., is commonly found in heavy smokers.
The researchers also found a seemingly paradoxical result among two-thirds of the high-exposure group of non-smokers—diffusion measurements that were lower than those found in the low-exposure group. Although these findings require more study, said Wang, they may reflect a narrowing in airways caused by early stages of another lung disease, chronic bronchitis.
“To our knowledge, this is the first imaging study to find lung damage in non-smokers heavily exposed to secondhand smoke,” said Wang. “We hope our work strengthens the efforts of legislators and policymakers to limit public exposure to secondhand smoke.”
### The study received financial support from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute, the Commonwealth of Virginia Technology Research Fund, and Siemens Medical Solutions.
Wang’s co-authors were Talissa A. Altes, M.D., and Kai Ruppert, Ph.D., now of the Children’s Hospital Radiology Department; and G. Wilson Miller, Ph.D., Eduard E. deLange, M.D., Jaime F. Mata, Ph.D., Gordon D. Cates, Jr., Ph.D., and John P. Mugler III, Ph.D., all of the University of Virginia Department of Radiology. Drs. Wang, Altes, and Ruppert were previously at the University of Virginia as well.
Hate to be picky, but wasn't this "proven" years ago to the tune of billions of dollars in tobacco money going to Big Law?
The WHO report did, indeed, show that women who lived with smokers were healthier than women who did not smoke and were not exposed to secondhand smoke.
“That is why I stick with firsthand smoke”
ROTFLMAO!!
All one has to do is suck in a lungful of used tobbaco smoke and when you choke, you know it was a bad thing.
Nothing to it. Unless you’ve chainsmoked yourself into an insensitive state.
You want to smoke, go ahead. The Statists can’t outlaw it, they’ve become addicted to the extortion.
Yea, but the problem is that the smoke-prohibitionists’ idea of “make me smoke with them” would limit smoking to:
- single (or married where both spouses smoke)
- unemployed (no smoking in, near, or before coming to the workplace)
- childless (can’t poison little Johnny)
- homeowners (don’t ya know that smoke goes into ventilation systems and in electrical sockets between apartments)
... and you can search FR for articles where the prohibitionists have eagerly gone after each of those angles.
I’m a non-smoker (I think after 7 years I can say non-smoker and not ex-smoker). Some people on FR accuse others of defending their habit, and it’s worth taking the time to mention that this is not my habit.
However, if the level of damage from 10 years of regular exposure is such that a researcher has to have someone inhale a radioactive isotope of helium and go through an MRI, and then only 1/3 of subjects had a change in their lungs, do you really think this level of damage requires the government exert such an intrusive control into peoples’ daily lives?
“Two 35 year old studies in early 2000s (UC-Berkeley; UIL-Urbana-Champaign resulted in the findings that there is no conclusive proof that second-hand smoke causes any injury to non-smokers.”
Harvard Med did a 5 year study and reached the same conclusion. The study was buried quicker than the Grace Report : )
Article on the WHO report on second hand smoke which claims no damage but benefits of 2nd hand smoke.
http://www.davehitt.com/facts/who.html
I think the government should stay the hell out of people’s lives. None of their business what one eats, drinks, smokes, shoots up, what ever.
I just think that second hand smoke makes me ill.
I don’t need a silly study to know that.
I do think there could be some legitimate government function when it comes to people subjecting others to their ingestion desires.
But I’d never call the cops over a burglar and would never vote for a business to be forced to become non-smoking.
I prefer the government to stay as far away from me as they possibly can..
They are of no use.
Both my parents smoked when I was a child. Unless one lives in a cave or a tent or a refrigerator box, I have a hard time believing that the concentration of cigarette smoke in any normal environment can be such as to make it more harmful than any number of other airborne pollutants. Jus tbecause one can smell smoke doesn't mean there is enough there to be harmful.
Ping
Scientific method can help you here.
Everything you assume is not necessarily true.
For example, low doses of allergens (including tobacco smoke) can cure you of allergic reactions.
Running around in a pristine, ultra-clean environment is dangerous for children's immune system development.
etc.
I wonder how much damage is done by an MRI...
"Funny you should ass."
Figures... all 3 studies buried because the anti-smoking Nazis have too much invested in their propaganda.
“Figures... all 3 studies buried because the anti-smoking Nazis have too much invested in their propaganda.”
Exactly!
bump
Well, duh. How could second-hand smoke NOT damage lungs? All other smoke, etc., in the air is unhealthy for lungs. Why would cigarette smoke be any different?
Presentation found here: (page 2)
http://www.rsna.org/Media/rsna/upload/All_Abstracts.pdf
Very small study group and statistically, the numbers aren’t saying much.
Love how they separate people:/s
Healthy Subjects
Vs
Active Smokers
Sorry to say this but, you would have to be a fool to not think that the poison is in the dose.
If you want to lock a mouse in an airtight cell the size of a shoebox and inject the smoke from 10,000 cigarettes 24X7, yeh you would probably get some damage.
Pretty much the same way you would get damage if you have someone drink 5 gallons of water in 15 minutes.
The poison is in the dose, not in the exposure.
Simple. Just stay away from smokers.
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