Here's a good example of idiocy from today's Bangor Daily News:
Dr. Erik Steele’s Channel 5 News discussion of teen-agers’ sleep habits on April 23 did not tell the whole story.
Children who live with parents who smoke in their homes are breathing massive amounts of toxic pollution, which makes them drowsy and lethargic, and brings on headaches.
Federal standards allow somewhere between zero and 100 parts per million of carbon monoxide as tolerable, but tobacco smoke contains 42,000 parts per million. Bigger kids who don’t smoke probably stay out of those homes as much as possible. Schoolchildren cannot think clearly enough in that atmosphere to do their homework properly, and feel less like doing it. Chemically impaired children in those homes are apt to sleep longer and be harder to wake up.
Ray Perkins Jr.
Founder and president Mid-Coast Maine Promotion
“For Clean Indoor Air”
Waldoboro
Ray Perkins' letter about the children of smokers being adversely affected by carbon monxide was truly incredible. The numbers he cites have nothing to do with actual exposures. Even in the enclosed system of an airplane cabin the ambient levels of carbon monoxide averaged below a single part per million back in 1989 when smoking was still allowed and common on airplanes. (Source: 1989 DOT Report on Cabin Air Quality) The safe OSHA Permissible Exposure Level is 50 parts per million. Children will be exposed to far higher levels of crbon monoxide when they are simply walking along the street near traffic than they would ever be exposed to in a private home because of smoking parents.
The same sort of thing holds true for almost all the chemicals that Antismokers try to frighten ordinary nonsmokers with. Formaldehyde *is* in tobacco smoke... but a nonsmoker will get a hundred times as much formaldehyde cooking dinner over a gas stove than from a smoking spouse.
Arsenic *is* in tobacco smoke.... but a nonsmoker would usually have to wait while a smoker smoked 2,500 cigarettes before they would ingest the amount they'd get from a cup of water. Tobacco smoke *does* have 4,000 chemicals in it... but our ordinary American diet has roughly 10,000 chemicals with a good number of those being carcinogenic. (Sources: Huber et al., "Smoke and Mirrors", Regulation:16:3:44 (1993); Alton Ochsner, M.D., Smoking and Your Life (New York: Julian Messner Pub, 1954 rev 1964); Science,258: 261-265 (1992) )
Newspapers should make a serious effort to verify claims that are made by letter writers to ensure that they are at least reasonably factual. Publishing propagandistic claims from extremists that are designed to frighten people does not serve the public interest.
(Thank you, Michael!)