Posted on 05/15/2006 12:33:20 PM PDT by martin_fierro
Study conducted in Nevada casinos claims DNA risk from secondhand smoke
ASSOCIATED PRESS
RENO, Nev. (AP) - Five years of research led by a University of Nevada, Reno department head in Reno and Las Vegas casinos have concluded there is a direct correlation between exposure to secondhand smoke in the workplace and damage to the employees' DNA.
"The more they were exposed to environmental tobacco smoke, the more the DNA damage, and that's going to lead to a higher risk of heart disease and cancer down the road," said Chris Pritsos.
Funded by a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, the clinical trial followed 125 employees who work on the gambling floors of casinos in both northern and southern Nevada.
The subjects of the study were nonsmokers who were not exposed to secondhand smoke in their households, said Pritsos, chairman of the nutrition department at UNR.
"This is the first major study ever done looking at exposure to environmental tobacco smoke in the work force," Pritsos said. He added that casino floor workers are exposed to four times the amount of secondhand cigarette and cigar smoke than any other work force population.
Several Reno area casino executives who were asked by the Reno Gazette-Journal to respond to the study's findings did not return telephone calls.
Frank J. Fahrenkopf, president and chief executive officer of the American Gaming Association, said the smoking issue is a balancing act for casinos.
"In our industry, we realize we have customers who want to smoke, and that's a fact of life," he said. "Our No. 1 priority is the health and welfare of both our customers and our employees, and secondhand smoke poses a real issue for us."
Casinos put a lot of money into air conditioning and ventilation systems to try to accommodate smokers and nonsmokers, Fahrenkopf said.
"Any new major hotel-casino in Nevada is going to have the utmost cutting-edge technology designed to drag that smoke out of there so our employees and nonsmoking customers are not affected," he said. "No system is perfect yet, but we continue as an industry to work on it."
Alex Goldstein, a tourist visiting Reno from San Francisco, said he recently became a nonsmoker but doesn't support banning smoking in all public areas, as Scotland and Ireland have done. "It's a tough issue because smoking kind of infringes on other people's rights," Goldstein said.
Diana Woodbury, a violinist and dancer, won't perform in casinos or other venues that allow smoking.
"It would kill me," said Woodbury, who lives in South Lake Tahoe. "I have asthma and bronchitis, and when I get around smoke, I get pains in my chest."
Even though most casino showrooms no longer allow smoking, Woodbury said the smoke that wafts in from the main casino floor is enough to make her ill. "If I walk past a smoker, within minutes, I can't breathe. I have to use an inhaler," she said.
Woodbury is adamant in her view about the dangers of secondhand smoke. "For every eight smokers that die of smoking, they take one nonsmoker with them. Innocent victims like Dana Reeve," she said.
The widow of the late actor and quadriplegic Christopher Reeve died in March of lung cancer.
"She used to perform in smoky nightclubs and now she's dead," Woodbury said. "Only 44 years old, the same age I am."
The Nevada State Health Division said there are no data available on the number of deaths in the state caused by secondhand smoke.
This year, a secondhand smoke case filed by the widow of a nonsmoker who died at the age of 40 was settled in her favor Jan. 16, 10 years after Larry Ray Thaxton died of lung cancer.
A lifelong nonsmoker, Thaxton worked for the Norfolk Southern Railroad in an outdoor job. Thaxton complained about his constant exposure to co-workers' secondhand tobacco smoke in the bunk cars where he lived during the work week.
The expert witness in the case was James Repace, a physicist who will be helping Pritsos write a scientific paper on the results of the UNR professor's study on the effects of secondhand smoke on casino workers.
"Repace will be doing an analysis of our data in terms of air quality and the environmental tobacco smoke the participants of the study were exposed to," Pritsos said.
The paper first has to undergo a peer review, but Pritsos hopes to submit it for publication by the Journal of the American Medical Association later this year. A preliminary paper based on the results of 50 of the 125 subjects in Pritsos' clinical trial was published last December in Toxicology Letters.
Pufflist Ping
I'm shocked, I tell ya. Shocked!
I wonder if they called the execs at the Ponderosa Casino, the only "tobacco-free" casino in Reno?
Oh, wait--they went out of business!
Studies like this that haven't undergone peer review are useless until they've been vetted, and even then - it depends on which publication it was submitted to for peer review.
And I didn't read the article closely, but I didn't see mention of a control group.
No mention of a control group, nor any methodologies, nor anything at all except a scream of fear.
I claim a worthless study, conducted for profit, with a foregone conclusion.
This report on a so-called "study is all over the place...
And the holes in the study are big enough to drive hundreds of semis loaded with smokes through...
First of all, 125 subjects is minuscule; almost a joke.
Where is the explanation of why it totally disagrees with the UN World Health Organization study involving tens of thousands of subjects tracked for 15 or more years?
Where is the methodology? Where is the peer review? Where is the science?
The EPA was excoriated for allowing fake or doctored studies from being used as a basis of anti-smoking laws a long time ago. Looks like they never stopped!
I can't stop laughing at the "bottom line" the anti-smoking welfare system. Full employment for incompetent scientists and their junk science.
$20,000 per subject? WTF?
What I can't believe is that we're actually in agreement on something.
< |:P~
Another anti smoking hit piece put out with no evidence of the finding explained.
Don't feel too bad.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day...
: )
I stopped going to casinos and drinking all night spending my entire paycheck and passing out with prostitutes because that smoke was getting hazardous to my health.
L O L
Judge Osteen threw out the study in 1999 and recently, the WHO discounted this second hand smoke bs as well.
And yet, the anti's are continually allowed to publish these lies about second hand smoke killing everyone. The media just keeps the Ornl Research swept under the rug as well as the WHO. This is getting to be way out of line!
The World Health Organization actually did a study on secondhand smoke which showed that it doesn't even make people sick, much less kill them. Now, it makes people uncomfortable. They don't like it. I don't like secondhand cigarette smoke myself -- it reeks -- but it doesn't kill. It doesn't. - a quote by Rush Limbaugh
CDC claims 38,000 die from SHS each year. As published in JAMA on April 20,2005; " Excess Deaths Associated With Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity", underweight associated with 33746 deaths per year. Illinois has 4% of US poulation; that is 1,520 deaths per year from SHS and 1,350 deaths per year from Underweight. That works out to be about 4 deaths per day from either cause. If SHS is such a problem that local politicians have to pass laws to solve the problem; what justification do they have for not passing laws to solve the Underweight deaths? I suspect there are death certificates with starvation as cause of death; there are none with SHS as cause of death. Ask your county health
depts. about all of this. - quote by Gary K
DON'T LET THE HEADLINES FOOL YOU
Court throws out challenge to EPA findings on secondhand smoke - (December 2002) - The ruling was based on the highly technical grounds that since the EPA didn't actually enact any new regulations (it merely declared ETS to be a carcinogen without actually adopting any new rules), the court had no jurisdiction to rule in the matter. This court ruling on the EPA report is NOT a stamp of approval for that report. Judge Osteen's criticisms of the EPA report are still completely valid and is accompanied by other experts.
Anything that has Repace's name on it is suspect to begin with.
And what does a physicist know about medical matters?
"If I walk past a smoker, within minutes, I can't breathe. I have to use an inhaler," she said.
OHHHHHHH, (rubbing my forehead)
Woodbury is adamant in her view about the dangers of secondhand smoke. "For every eight smokers that die of smoking, they take one nonsmoker with them. Innocent victims like Dana Reeve," she said.
You'll never take me alive, anti! I'll take as many of you with me as I can!
But, seriously folks, good grief. I'll bet she's the kind that wigs out when they see an UN-LIT cigar in somebody's chops. Geeesh......
I'd sure love to see her produce some proof of this statement.
You and me both. But, you and I know if she did, it would be another load of crap, more than likely.
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