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To: Gabz
Secondhand Smoke Can Cause Lung Cancer in Nonsmokers
Secondhand smoke has been classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a known cause of lung cancer in humans (Group A carcinogen).

Passive smoking is estimated by EPA to cause approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths in nonsmokers each year.
Secondhand Smoke is a Serious Health Risk to Children
The developing lungs of young children are also affected by exposure to secondhand smoke.

Infants and young children whose parents smoke are among the most seriously affected by exposure to secondhand smoke, being at increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections such as pneumonia and bronchitis. EPA estimates that passive smoking is responsible for between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections in infants and children under 18 months of age annually, resulting in between 7,500 and 15,000 hospitalizations each year.
Children exposed to secondhand smoke are also more likely to have reduced lung function and symptoms of respiratory irritation like cough, excess phlegm, and wheeze.
Passive smoking can lead to buildup of fluid in the middle ear, the most common cause of hospitalization of children for an operation.

Asthmatic children are especially at risk. EPA estimates that exposure to secondhand smoke increases the number of episodes and severity of symptoms in hundreds of thousands of asthmatic children. EPA estimates that between 200,000 and 1,000,000 asthmatic children have their condition made worse by exposure to secondhand smoke. Passive smoking may also cause thousands of non-asthmatic children to develop the condition each year.

http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/etsbro.html#Secondhand%20smoke%20can%20cause%20lung%20cancer%20in%20nonsmokers.

See also:
http://www.oma.org/phealth/2ndsmoke.htm
http://www.fensende.com/Users/swnymph/refs/smoke.html
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/may97/smoking_5-20.html
http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/subabuse/tobacc06.htm

Now, I have shown you 5 sources documenting that Second Hand Smoke is harmful. Can you give me more than one reputable site that says that SHS is NOT harmful? Or is it just 'common sense'?
50 posted on 06/06/2003 11:42:42 AM PDT by Hodar (With Rights, comes Responsibilities. Don't assume one, without assuming the other.)
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To: Hodar; Just another Joe; SheLion; Max McGarrity
The EPA was thrown out in court because the data they used was cherry picked to come up with a predeterminined designation - the rest of them use all of the same flawed data.

The WHO completed the largest ever, multinational study on SHS and the only statistically conclusive effect they found is that children exposed to SHS have a 22% less chance of getting lung cancer later in life.

2 weeks ago the British Medical Journal pubilshed a study from California that was based upon more than 30 years of following the same people started by the Cancer Society in the 60s. There is no statistically significant increased risk of lung cancer even after 40 years of spousal and workplace exposure.

The Department of Energy, through it's Oak Ridge National Laboratory had bar and waitstaff where air monitoring devices and determined that working in a smoking-permitted environment exposes them to the equivalent of 6 cigarettes per year.

For a study to be epidemiologically significant the elevated risks should never cross parity (parity =1)and should show an elevated relative risk of at least 2 or better yet 3 to rule out any possibility of confounding factors.

Example. There is an elevated RR of 1.65 for lung cancer in drinkers of whole milk. Are you going to stop drinking whole milk because of this risk, of course not, it's way too low for it to prove drinking whole milk can cause lung cancer. Do you know what the RR for lung cancer is for exposure to SHS, even 20-30 years of daily exposure at home and work? 1.19 - 1.43...........in other words statistically INsignificant.

I am not at my own computer and therefore do not have the links at my finger tips - but believe me I am not pulling this info out of thin air. I'm sure one of the others has links for these and others closer at hand.
56 posted on 06/06/2003 11:58:10 AM PDT by Gabz (anti-smokers = personification of everything wrong in this country)
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To: Hodar
Now, I have shown you 5 sources documenting that Second Hand Smoke is harmful. Can you give me more than one reputable site that says that SHS is NOT harmful?

Number 1. You cannot prove a negative.

Number 2. As for your five sites.
The first is the debunked EPA study. The federal courts already threw that one out.
The second site - It cites Stanton Glantz, one of the foremost anti-smokers and cites the debunked EPA study.
The third site - It cites no studies and if you look at the sentence, "Infants in the study will be followed for years to see if those exposed to the chemicals have a higher incidence of cancer than nonsmokers' babies.
The fourth site - Look at the next two sentences and tell me when you see the lie
DR. ICHIRO KAWACHI: Yes. In fact, they answered the question about passive smoking at the beginning of the study in 1982, and their exposure status was self-reported.

DR. ICHIRO KAWACHI: Basically, we took advantage of a 20-year-long ongoing study of women, and about halfway through the study, we sent out a questionnaire asking them whether they were exposed to passive smoking in the home and in the workplace, and then we just sat and waited and saw what happened to them in terms of their heart attack rates.

so we're saying that virtually everything that we know active smoking does to the circulatory system probably the same thing is happening to the bodies of people who inhale second-hand smoke.

We weren't able to precisely estimate just how much of a dose and how long one would have to be exposed to in order to get into increased--situations of increased risk, such as we observed.
The fifth site - Approximately 2 percent of lung cancer deaths each year are thought to be caused by passive smoking.

Now then, when you find scientific proof, that hasn't been debunked, we can talk about the antis having a point.

66 posted on 06/06/2003 12:13:50 PM PDT by Just another Joe (FReeping can be addictive and helpful to your mental health)
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To: Hodar
Please ask them to prove their statements, I asked the Cancer Society for a list of the 4.000 toxins in cigarettes, they didn't have one, then I asked for just 20, they didn't have that either.

To buy in to everything officials say, is at best very very naive.

95 posted on 06/06/2003 1:02:05 PM PDT by Great Dane
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To: Hodar
You call those sources? Get real. If smoking and/or 2nd hand smoke causes all those things, why don't all smokers/2nd hand smokers suffer from them? Do Americans have any property rights? Should they?
123 posted on 06/06/2003 1:43:01 PM PDT by candeee
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