Did Carmona Read His Own Report?

Reason ^ | June 27, 2006 | Jacob Sullum

[yoe]

Michael Siegel, a tobacco control activist who supports government-imposed smoking bans, slams the Office of the Surgeon General for falsely claiming or implying that brief, transient exposure to secondhand smoke raises the risk of lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, and heart attack. The inaccurate or misleading statements appear not in the surgeon general's report on secondhand smoke but in the press release, fact sheet, and remarks by Surgeon General Richard Carmona that accompanied the report's publication. The press release, for example, claims that "even brief exposure to secondhand smoke has immediate adverse effects on the cardiovascular system and increases risk for heart disease and lung cancer," attributing this finding to the report. Siegel, who believes that long-term, intense exposure to secondhand smoke (such as that experienced by people married to smokers for decades) can cause lung cancer and heart disease, faults the surgeon general for "distort[ing] the science in an effort to sensationalize it and increase the emotional impact of the communication":

There is absolutely no evidence to support this claim. Certainly, no evidence is presented in the Surgeon General's report to support this claim. And certainly, the Surgeon General's report draws no such conclusion. In fact, such a conclusion flies in the face of common medical sense. How could it possibly be that a brief exposure to secondhand smoke can cause heart disease? It takes many years for heart disease to develop. It takes years of exposure to tobacco smoke even for a smoker to develop heart disease. I estimate that it takes at least 25 years of exposure (based on the fact that very few smokers are diagnosed with heart disease before age 40).

So how could it possibly be that for an active smoker, heart disease takes 25 years of exposure to tobacco smoke to develop, but for a passive smoker, it only takes a single, transient, brief exposure?

It is also quite misleading to tell the public that a brief exposure to secondhand smoke increases the risk of lung cancer. There is certainly no evidence for this and the Surgeon General's report itself draws no such conclusion. In fact, the report makes it clear that most of the studies linking secondhand smoke and lung cancer studied nonsmokers with many years of intense exposure.

In his remarks, Carmona similarly claimed that "breathing secondhand smoke for even a short time can damage cells and set the cancer process in motion. Brief exposure can have immediate harmful effects on blood and blood vessels, potentially increasing the risk of a heart attack." Clearly, it's not just the news media that are misrepresenting the findings of the surgeon general's report. So is the surgeon general.

[yoe]

Carmona, who has been stragely silent on many things, seems to be taking his talking points from C Everett Koop. To my knowledge there has been only one study done on second hand smoke - it proved SHS harmless.

Arizona is getting ready to ban all smoking in pubic places - maybe this is Carmona grandstanding.

[ZGuy]

I dream of an administration which steps into office saying that they will create a board of epidemiologists and real scientists who will advise the President on scientific issues. Of course it will never happen.

[wolfcreek]

Have either one of these guys ever seen what's in the air or our water these days?

[mwernimont]

Here's another study by the American Cancer Society which proved secondhand smoke levels are up to 25,000 times safer than OSHA regulations for SHS:

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2004/04/american-cancer-society-test-results.html

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2006/07/american-cancer-society-catches.html

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/