[E Rocc]

WHO proclaimed, "Second-hand smoke is a real and significant threat to public health. Supported by two decades of evidence, the scientific community now agrees that there is no safe level of exposure to second-hand smoke

What a bunch of bullmodell. Just about any workplace toxin is regulated by what is called a "permissable exposure level", or a PEL for short. There's often both an instantaneous PEL and an 8-hour average PEL.

There are a few chemicals that have PELs which are effectively zero. They are so nasty that if you were to get a concentrated dose of them, you'd need either an ambulance or a coroner immediately. Yet people ingest concentrated amounts of tobacco smoke not only routinely, but for long periods of time.

This statement insults the intelligence of anyone with the slightest clue about how either chemical-related occupational safety or basic toxicology works. Quite clearly, if someone can puff away all day, the mere smell of a cigarette isn't going to make anyone else sick, except perhaps for psychological reasons.

As is the case whenever the left ignores or warps science, the objective is political and anti-freedom.

-Eric

[Just another Joe]

As is the case whenever the left ignores or warps science, the objective is political and anti-freedom.

It's not just the left. The RINO right is into it too.

[Max McGarrity]

Bingo, Eric, and thanks for pointing out the PELs standards. There's a letter on OSHA's website in answer to a rabid anti's demand that they step in and make environmental tobacco smoke a workplace hazard in which they say:

Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that, under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Limits (PELs), as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000). For example, various studies referenced by Guerin et al. in The Chemistry of Environmental Tobacco Smoke: Composition and Measurement indicate that many substances are well below the individual permissible exposure level [e.g., acetaldehyde values in enclosed places varied from 65 to 1080 g/m3 (Page 295) and acrolein values ranged from 20-300 g/m3 (Page 295-296)]. It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.