Assignment America: Smoke screens/One of the best articles I have read!

NEW YORK, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- If you were to be strapped down on a surgical table while four guys exhaled smoke directly into your mouth and nostrils for 30 years, you MIGHT get lung cancer 40 years after they stopped -- but it's not likely.

I'm using this absurd example, because ALL of the other examples in the available scientific literature are equally absurd.

The second-hand smoke scare is a political farce. It was invented in the mid-1990s by the Clinton administration -- it has Hillary's hands all over it -- because anti-smoking radicals, who tend to be like anti-abortion radicals in their zealous devotion to the cause, actually convinced the Environmental Protection Agency to change its "conventional standard for statistical significance" so that second-hand smoke could be proven to be a killer.

Normally nobody but specialists would care -- substandard scientific reports get released all the time -- except that it's now being used to justify anti-smoking legislation that, in the case of New York City, could result in smokers not even being able to light up in their own clubs, their own bars, and, in one case, their own apartment buildings -- even if the place is clearly marked as a smoking establishment.

If Mayor Michael Bloomberg gets his way, they won't even be able to smoke in smoking lounges, cigar bars or tobacco shops.

Wouldn't the American way be to put a big sign on the front of your restaurant? "People Smoke In Here -- Don't Come In If It Bugs You." And then let everyone act like grownups?

The simple fact of the matter is that by about 1990 everyone had reached a compromise on this issue. Smokers would sit in smoking sections.

Ventilation systems would be installed in public buildings. Everyone would live and let live.

Not good enough for the smoke-haters. They knew that arguing against a legal substance on the basis that it was hurting the people who LIKED IT was a losing battle, and un-American besides. But if they could somehow prove that innocent people were dying ...

And so they proved it with "junk science." The Bush administration recently rejected a scientific report, 30 years in the making, signed by some of the top researchers in the world that said fossil fuels were the principle cause of global warming in the form of air pollution. The reason Bush rejected the findings: it was "junk science" from "the bureaucracy."

If that was junk science, then the second-hand smoke research comes from a junkyard infested with giant rats and scavenging stray dogs. Most of the available studies have "confidence intervals" right around 1.0 -- which means no confidence at all. And almost all of them fail to take into account the other sources of air pollution. It's as though our polluted air were made up of 140 parts car exhaust, 70 parts smoke from fossil-fuel-burning factories, 40 parts methane, and .0000001 parts smoke from that guy on the corner sneaking a cigarette on his lunch hour. So what do we do?

The fact is, there have been 40 epidemiological studies of second-hand smoke, almost all of them based on the experience of non-smokers married to smokers. Thirty-two of them found no evidence of second-hand smoke causing any disease at all. The other eight showed "weak association" -- but in some of the studies there was actually a NEGATIVE result, indicating that non-smoking spouses of smokers are LESS likely to get a serious disease.

Of course, the ones that showed a negative result were thrown out as wacky, but the others are equally wacky. For one thing, they're all infected with what science calls "recall bias." People interviewed are asked to reconstruct smoking patterns over their entire lifetimes, and it's been shown time and again that their memories are faulty, and in many cases, designed to mislead. The non-smoker frequently turns out to be a smoker for a portion of those years; he changes his story for insurance reasons or because of pending litigation. And the non-smoker with lung cancer tends to seek external causes and fasten on the most convenient one, even when we know that a person living in an urban area is subject to multiple possible causes of lung cancer, most of them far more potent than cigarette smoke.

Complicating the issue is the media treatment of second-hand smoke. If you say something often enough, it acquires the patina of truth even if the original basis for it is phony. I could use dozens of examples, but I'll just use the most recent one that I know of. Here's the lead paragraph from a July 12 article in the Globe and Mail, the Canadian newspaper:

"People who are routinely exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke, such as workers in bars and restaurants, can see their risk of lung cancer triple, a new study says. The Canadian study provides some of the most compelling scientific evidence yet for a total ban on workplace smoking, including bars and restaurants."

Okay, now let's look at the study the article was based on. It was published in the International Journal of Cancer and signed by a lead researcher for Health Canada -- a government agency with a vested interest. (Public health agency research tends to be uniformly alarmist.) Even so, the Globe and Mail's report leaves out the most important conclusion in the study:

"Although more years of and more intense residential passive smoke exposure tended to be associated with higher risk estimates, no clear dose-response relationship was evident."

Any particular reason this would be left out? Other than that it's inconvenient? Of course, to report the data without any agency spin on it, you would need to study the tables, evaluate the "confidence intervals," allow for "recall bias," and do all the other things scientists normally do, and journalists SHOULD do.

Apparently Australian journalists are a little more diligent. When the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council released a second-hand smoke report in 1997, the authors decided to omit the statistical tables entirely because they feared the press might study them.

An outraged judge eventually censured the government agency for what he called lying by omission -- the same thing that happened in a North Carolina court case, when a judge said the Environmental Protection Agency's report was rife with "cherry picking" of statistics, and had excluded half the available studies for no good reason. Later the Congressional Research Service issued a blistering report of its own, essentially calling the EPA study irresponsible and alarmist.

The reason the issue of second-hand smoke is such a raging issue right now is that it's being used as the rationale for additional anti-smoking laws. Waiters, bartenders and cooks need to be protected. This is what Bloomberg is basing his whole campaign on.

People might not LIKE smoke. They might find it unpleasant. But it's a huge jump to say it's actually harming their bodies, as though they were coal miners, soon to be diagnosed with Black Lung Disease. In fact, we have two studies that measured Environmental Tobacco Smoke -- the scientific name for it -- and came to the conclusion that, first of all, the smoke inhaled from the air is chemically and physically different from the smoke inhaled from the end of the cigarette, and, secondly, people who work eight hours a day in heavy-smoking environments had the following CE's (Cigarette Equivalents):

That's cigarettes PER YEAR. The worst case they could find had the bartender adding to his cancer risk at the rate of 4.3 cigarettes per year, which is, of course, like saying somebody who eats six Lifesavers is a candidate for heart disease.

Even more to the point, scientists computed what would happen if a 20-by-20-foot room with a 9-foot ceiling were filled with smoke, and then compared that exposure to the EPA's lowest published "danger" doses. Here are the results:

For the lowest level of danger for benzopyrene, you would need to have 222,000 cigarettes burning in the room. For the lowest level of acetone, you would need to burn 118,000 cigarettes. For the lowest level of hydrazine, you would need 14,000 cigarettes. And for toluene, you would need a cool million smokes, all burning at the same time. Unless, of course, you opened the door or window -- then you would need more.

John C. Bailar, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine recently, said that, if you sum up all the available evidence, the MOST alarming case you can make for second-hand smoke being related to disease is "We don't know." (He was primarily writing about heart disease, but the conclusions on lung cancer are similar.)

Bailar was being polite. We know. Get a ventilation fan. Put up a sign. Go to separate rooms. But let's not start a whole new era of Prohibition in which people have to open speakeasies and private clubs just to enjoy a meal or a drink. We can't all afford to go to Paris to smoke.

(John Bloom, a smoker, writes a number of columns for UPI and may be contacted at joebob@upi.com or through his Web site at joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.)

Furthrmore they want to increase the tax $3.00 a pack.(have to help the deficit you know), with the logic of the libs, we stop kids from smoking, we raise the taxes per pack so that we can put that money in the general fund then we can have more programs, gee, wonder what would happen if the cigarettes sales took a downward trend, wonder what they would tax next?, don't say booze they decided against that.

Burlem, that attempt to increase the tax on cigarettes is not dead, it's sitting in committee, and I expect it will be rammed through toward the end of next week, prbably minutes before the legislative session ends. That will make the price of cigarettes in Kookiefornia equivalent to NYC. Never fear, though, Robber Reiner has already been to Washington and made a deal to get FEDERAL FUNDING for his $700 million a year programs if the taxes on tobacco products fall. I'm absolutely amazed that Americans are putting up with this crap.

BTW, time for another lecture to ANYONE who still pays into the Smoker Shakedown...SMOKE CHEAP, IT'S YOUR CIVIC DUTY!! Buy online, buy from the reservations, or make your own additive-free, virtually tax-free cigarettes for less than $8 a CARTON in about an hour.

JUST DO IT!

Also mythical are almost all claims linking diet and health.

Well that's quite a statement. Could you give us some details. I really want to know. I promise not to flame you.

Thanks for the promise! I certainly hope I would catch myself before ever flaming anyone with mercy's screen (or real) name.

I agree that it is a sweeping statement. There are thousands of turgid articles in epidemiology and related medical journals making such claims, and no one person can examine them all. But most are pitifully weak from a scientific proof standpoint.

I strongly recommend the book "The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine" by James Le Fanu. The first half of the book, on the rise of modern medicine, is consistently facinating, and the ending section, on the fall of most medical research into near irrelevance, tackles this issue far better than I could ever attempt to.

A good internet link (but not as good as that book) is:

Junk Science

"And the killer irony is that many firefighters smoke. We would joke after a job when we were back at the station cleaning the gear (and they were smoking) that the products of combustion from most fires are not as lethal as cigarette smoke.

As you well know, smoke from fires, as opposed to hot gas, or the fire itself, accounts for a large amount of fire fatalities. No one ever died from cigarette smoke. Although it has been a couple of years since I reviewed the literature on second hand smoke. The cruel experiments would pipe the equivalent of the smoke of thousands of cigarettes a day, for months into rats, and I believe, dogs lungs via intubation. Nada. Nothing. The researchers wanted to get a graph of respiratory cancers rates in relation to side stream cig smoke. For example, more cigs, more cancer, less cigs less cancer. Even with rodents especially breed to get cancer, no one has been able to induce it under any circumstances. Hence the honest statement that there is no safe level of second hand smoke. There is also no unsafe level either, since no cancers could be manufactured under any circumstances.

Lastly, everything is toxic and fatal, to include water and oxygen. It is just a matter of dose. It isn't the substances that makes the poison, it is the amount.

One other thing, what is this "civilian" bit. What are you in the Marine Corps? If you are not in the military, you're a civilian. And don't give me that "I'm in a paramilitary organization." That is like para-pregant. Yachts clubs have legal characters and have captains and admirals, never the less they’re still like everyone else, citizens.

"One other thing, what is this "civilian" bit. What are you in the Marine Corps? "

Not in the Marines yet, hopefully I will be come January.

By civilian I think they are not including the deaths of firefighters who respond to the fatal fires. NFPA's terminology - not mine - take up your gripe with them.

http://www.nfpa.org/Research/OneStopDataShop/OneStopDataShop.asp#leading - and click on "See more information about the leading causes of fires "

Enjoy the following on second hand smoke - which has a lot of bad stuff in it that I do not want to be exposed to. I am off to run 10 miles. See ya!

http://www.repace.com/fact_exp.html
Secondhand Smoke Exposure
SHS is a complex mixture of gas and particle-phase chemicals generated during the burning and smoking of tobacco products (CalEPA, 1997). Chemicals present in SHS include irritants and systemic toxicants such as hydrogen cyanide and sulfur dioxide, mutagens and carcinogens such as benzo(a)pyrene, formaldehyde and 4-aminobiphenyl, and reproductive toxicants such as nicotine, cadmium, and carbon monoxide (CalEPA, 1997). Many SHS constituents have been identified as hazardous by state, federal, and international agencies. To date, over 50 compounds in tobacco smoke have been identified as carcinogens and six as developmental or reproductive toxicants by the State of California. Table 2 shows 43 known or suspected carcinogens in tobacco smoke identified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, 1987).

CalEPA has health warning on bags of washed playbox sand. That should give you an idea of how wacky they are. But health nazis being unfit, and scared, and sickly to work in a real job have to work somewhere.

Well, let say on your run you don't encounter any 2ndSmoke. I will say that will have breathed in 10 or more thousands of known cancerous compounds.

And especially, if you want to avoid cellular mutagenic chemicals, do not eat vegetables. They are a trove of toxins.

Seriously, don't make physically contact with any person or any mammals. Each and every day, more and more virus are being discovered as the cause of cancer. Adding H. pylori, that make bacteria cancer causing.

Oh, and barbecues and their smoke are aromatic hydrocarbons. This includes the charred bits on the meat, and would included any roasted, fried, baked meats. Baked, fried, toasted wheat products. And while your in the Corps, bobbing around in a Navy ship, please tell the Gunny that they paints, oil, fluids and solvents are right then and there, which they will, assaulting your mitochondria. This will also include the chlorine bath the salt air will give you. Well, I could go on.

Secondhand Smoke Exposure
SHS is a complex mixture of gas and particle-phase chemicals generated during the burning and smoking of tobacco products (CalEPA, 1997). Chemicals present in SHS include irritants and systemic toxicants such as hydrogen cyanide and sulfur dioxide, mutagens and carcinogens such as benzo(a)pyrene, formaldehyde and 4-aminobiphenyl, and reproductive toxicants such as nicotine, cadmium, and carbon monoxide (CalEPA, 1997). Many SHS constituents have been identified as hazardous by state, federal, and international agencies. To date, over 50 compounds in tobacco smoke have been identified as carcinogens and six as developmental or reproductive toxicants by the State of California. Table 2 shows 43 known or suspected carcinogens in tobacco smoke identified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, 1987).

Oh for heaven's sake. Where did you get that garbage.

Here's a op-ed I wrote for the paper awhile back:

Don’t swallow that food while you’re dining out

In response to the letter by Paul L. Perito, chairman and president, Star Scientific Inc: Cigarettes and cigarette smoke contain a multitude of toxic chemicals, according to anti-smoking zealots. Therefore, the public must be protected from evil smokers who would threaten the health of nonsmoking men, women and children in places like restaurants and bars.

But what exactly are those helpless victims eating and drinking in their smoke-free, toxic-free non-smoking section of the restaurant? You might be surprised. Holding your breath while you eat might protect you from toxic secondhand smoke, but don’t swallow that food!

Everybody likes roast turkey, especially when the whole family is around the table. Hope they like heterocyclic amines, too. Nothing goes better with turkey than some bread stuffing ethyl alcohol, benzo(a)pyrene, ethyl carbamate, furan derivatives, furfural, dihydrazines, d-limonene, psoralens, quercetin glycosides and safrole. Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like cranberry sauce, unless it’s the furan derivatives that go with it.

How about some prime rib of beef with parsley sauce? Use lots of ketchup unless you have a taste for heterocyclic amines and psoralens. How about some broccoli spears? The allyl isothiocyanate ought to kill the taste. Who doesn’t like a nice baked potato? Can’t have too much ethyl alcohol and caffeic acid, I suppose. Perhaps you prefer a sweet potato instead. You’ll still get your dose of ethyl alcohol, but with a shot of furfural to boot. No meal is complete without rolls and butter. Or the ethyl alcohol, benzo(a)pyrene, ethyl carbamate, furan derivatives and furfural that come with it.

Save room for dessert pumpkin pie is good, even with the benzo(a)pyrene, coumarin and safrole inside. Apple pie is my favorite, though I’d rather not think about the acetaldehyde, caffeic acid, coumarin, estragole, ethyl alcohol, quercetin glycoside and safrole that go with it. Fresh apples, pears, grapes or mangos? They’re always good, even with the acetaldehyde, benzaldehyde, caffeic acid, d-limonene, estragole and quercetin glycosides. Anybody else need a drink after all that?

If you drink enough red wine, you won’t notice the ethyl alcohol and ethyl carbamate. If you drink so much that it’s time for a cup of coffee, the benzo(a)pyrene, benzaldehyde, benzene, benzofuran, caffeic acid, catechol, 1,2,5,6-dibenz(a)anthracene, d-limonene, ethyl benzene, furan, furfural, hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone might do you some good. Or not. If tea is more to your liking, you might need some sugar to mask the taste of the benzo(a)pyrene and quercetin glycosides.

And for you health-conscious types who prefer only herbal teas, have some symphytine with your comfrey tea. Or some benzyl acetate with your jasmine tea. A cigarette might taste good after all that.

Oh for heaven's sake. Where did you get that garbage?

(That's my response to your response!) And I listed my source. Just because you don't like the findings that second hand smoke contains bad stuff does not make the scientific findings "garbage."

As for your op-ed, even if true, it is irrelevant. Why? Because what I eat, I eat. It does nothing to you if I eat all of the things you describe. UNLIKE second hand smoke, which you create and those around you inhale. I really don't care about the health of smokers - if they are foolish enough to smoke, let them. But don't expose me to the by-products of it. And likewise, I don't care if you don't believe that smoking is unhealthy, I do, so don't expose me to it. Why should I suffer for your behavior? Just like being gay - it's behavior that you guys are engaging in that is bad, and you want society to condone.

Oh - 10 mile run went well. Negative split on a 5 mile course. Averaged 7:40 a mile. Guess all that non-smoking is really hurting me.

PUUULEEEEZE! Not REPACE!!! ANYONE BUT REPACE!!!!

gop guy, Repace is a certifiable lunatic. I know, I know, he bills himself as the "world's leading expert on secondhand smoke," and he used to work for the EPA, but that's only part of the Repace story.

When he worked for the EPA, even though the entire agency was smokefree, he claimed there were "toxins" in the air that made him sick. He demanded, and got, permission to work at home. On occasion, though, he was required to come into EPA headquarters for meetings, etc., and he wore a GAS MASK. He also sued EPA for those imaginary toxins causing his illnesses--which it turns out were all in his head. He lost.

This is the guy who says with a straight face that it would take winds of 300 mph to clear smoke from a room. At one meeting I attended, he upped that figure to 700 mph!! Just saw a special on Hurricane Andrew, one of the 3 worst hurricanes ever experienced here in the US, and the strongest gusts recorded were right at 200 mph. Repace also believes molecules of tobacco smoke hang around and jump out and attack those who enter the room where people have smoked in the past month or even longer. Will you PLEASE use your common sense??? Please?

FYI, the paragraph you quote uses the CalEPA report for its justification. The CalEPA report was based almost exclusively on the US EPA report which was a total farce and has been invalidated by a federal judge. It's also deceptive.

OSHA says the amount of toxins found in shs seldom if ever reach the necessary level to be considered dangerous. Toxicologists have proven that it would take THOUSANDS of cigarettes burning simultaneously in an UNVENTILATED room to reach permissible levels of ALL those things he mentions. The dose makes the poison. That's why the arsenic in your drinking water or the salt on your food won't kill you.

You have been bamboozled, dude, by a well-funded, very slick bunch of snake oil pitchmen and you've swallowed it whole. It's fine if you don't want to be "exposed to" environmental tobacco smoke and there's no reason in this day and age you ever should be. Just stay out of smoker-friendly places and you need never smell tobacco smoke. Just realize that it's not because it will harm you, it's because you don't like it.

"OSHA says the amount of toxins found in shs seldom if ever reach the necessary level to be considered dangerous."

Shouldn't you be attacking OSHA now too? And look again what you wrote: "...seldom if ever reach the necessary level to be considered dangerous" - that means it is within the realm of possibility. I would be interested in exactly what their reports say. And if you are ceding that OSHA has some credibility - then you are buying that shs is bad - even if it is just "seldom if ever". So please make some sense and show consistency. I say that it is possible that shs is harmful and do not want to be exposed to it. After mentioning the OSHA report you then refuse to acknowledge the possibility that shs is harmful. ?

"You have been bamboozled, dude, by a well-funded, very slick bunch of snake oil pitchmen and you've swallowed it whole."

Ah - far more appropriate in describing you suckers who started smoking and keep smoking because the billions spent on advertising by Big Tobacco:
"The industry spent $9.5 billion on advertising and promotions in 2000, the last year for which such figures were available. The total was 16 percent greater than the previous year." - http://www.med.sc.edu:1081/tobaccoadchanges.htm

who are the well-funded slick bunch that are anti-smoking? And I am sure that their ad budget is a fraction of $9.5 billion? And thanks to the settlement, much of their $$$ now comes from cig sales.

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