No I am not saying any such thing. I am just stating that the only statistically significant finding from the WHO study was that childhood exposure showed no increased risk for lung cancer at all. The RR stayed below 1 at the top and bottom of the confidence interval.
I was also trying to point out that there are actually guidelines for stastical significance that are employed by the scientific community for things like this and they are being abused or out right ignored when it comes to the subject of SHS.
What I do think is unhealthy for kids is the antiseptic environment some people wrap them up in. Kids need germs to develop their immune systems - I'm not talking about being unsanitary but reality.
I do not remember very many people with asthma when I was growing up - but it seems that more kids have asthma today than ever before (and the government numbers show it) yet less kids today are exposed to any form of SHS than ever before.
I am not saying exposure to SHS prevents asthma - however using the circle logic of the pro-smoking-ban types that could be extrapolated that way. Less SHS exposure = increased asthma rates.
One more thing on the SHS studies, and then I'll get off my soapbox (for the moment) - Often times the funding for these studies get pulled when it appears the data is not going the way the funders want it to or the studies themselves get buried (like the WHO study) or changes are made in the confidence intervals (what the EPA did) or they do a meta-analysis of a number of studies which used different methodology (EPA again) or they just choose to meta-analysis the studies that show what they want it to show (EPA again) and finally in general the media is lazy and will just take a press release at face value without bothering to check out what a study actually says or what the numbers really mean. This happens with the media on nearly every issue, but it is particularly apparent when it comes to SHS.
About 2 years ago I was on a TV program debating the issue with an anti. She brought up the WHO study and I asked her if she had read it, she had not, so I read to her the conclusion of it and she insisted that was my personal interpretation, about 8 months later I was invited back to debate the same anti again. She again brought it up and I again read her the conclusion - she still had not read the study but insisted that she had enough people to interpret it for her so she didn't have to read it. All she was doing was quoting from a press release issued about the conclusions. I had in my hand a copy of the abstract of the study - I was right and she was wrong, she knew it and quickly tried to change the subject.
I have seen articles what claim exactly what you said concerning raising kids in too sterile an environment (asthma, allergies, ect). However, I'm not too certain that the link between robust immune and respiratory systems and SHS. Smoking was more popular a few decades ago, and the rates may have been lower. I'm curious what they were 100-200 yrs ago when smoking was rare.