The toll due to secondhand smoke

"In Europe's high-income countries, only 71 child deaths were recorded for this study, while 35,388 deaths were in adults. In contrast, in Africa, there were an estimated 43,375 deaths potentially attributable to secondhand smoking in children compared with 9,514 in adults."

Without arguing for or against anything, those numbers aren't quite "believable" comparatively without more of an explanation than poverty and access to health care.

Some partial explanations I can think of:

*Wealthy Europeans are less likely to smoke around children than in Africa.

*In Africa, ya gotta be a tough specimen to survive to adulthood, so adults in Africa are maybe less "genetically" susceptible to the harm second hand smoke can cause?

*In Africa, something other than second hand smoke is responsible for a far greater percentage of adult deaths, and that something is not a threat to wealthy Europeans. Infectious disease? War? But those would seem to be bigger threats to children too...

*Data from Africa is not reliably accurate. (Or is inaccurate in a different way from European data.)

*It's a typo, and the number of adult deaths in Africa is supposed to be a 5 digit number.

On a purely anecdotal note, my grandmother before she died could have spoken to the danger of second-hand smoke: After 35 years of living with a heavy smoker (albeit with an 8-year break when he died of throat cancer), she developed lung cancer and was dead within 15 months of her diagnosis.

From my own experience, when I was a kid, an hour in cigarette smoke was worth four in the emergency room for asthma (if I was lucky - if not, it was an overnight or longer).

They have created a fear that is based on nothingââ
World-renowned pulmonologist, president of the prestigious Research Institute Necker for the last decade, Professor Philippe Even, now retired, tells us that heâs convinced of the absence of harm from passive smoking. A shocking interview.

What do the studies on passive smoking tell us?

PHILIPPE EVEN. There are about a hundred studies on the issue. First surprise: 40% of them claim a total absence of harmful effects of passive smoking on health. The remaining 60% estimate that the cancer risk is multiplied by 0.02 for the most optimistic and by 0.15 for the more pessimistic ⦠compared to a risk multiplied by 10 or 20 for active smoking! It is therefore negligible. Clearly, the harm is either nonexistent, or it is extremely low.

It is an indisputable scientific fact. Anti-tobacco associations report 3 000-6 000 deaths per year in France ...

I am curious to know their sources. No study has ever produced such a result.

Many experts argue that passive smoking is also responsible for cardiovascular disease and other asthma attacks. Not you?

They donât base it on any solid scientific evidence. Take the case of cardiovascular diseases: the four main causes are obesity, high cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes. To determine whether passive smoking is an aggravating factor, there should be a study on people who have none of these four symptoms. But this was never done. Regarding chronic bronchitis, although the role of active smoking is undeniable, that of passive smoking is yet to be proven. For asthma, it is indeed a contributing factor ... but not greater than pollen!

The purpose of the ban on smoking in public places, however, was to protect non-smokers. It was thus based on nothing?

Absolutely nothing! The psychosis began with the publication of a report by the IARC, International Agency for Research on Cancer, which depends on the WHO (Editor's note: World Health Organization). The report released in 2002 says it is now proven that passive smoking carries serious health risks, but without showing the evidence. Where are the data? What was the methodology? It's everything but a scientific approach. It was creating fear that is not based on anything.

Why would anti-tobacco organizations wave a threat that does not exist?

The anti-smoking campaigns and higher cigarette prices having failed, they had to find a new way to lower the number of smokers. By waving the threat of passive smoking, they found a tool that really works: social pressure. In good faith, non-smokers felt in danger and started to stand up against smokers. As a result, passive smoking has become a public health problem, paving the way for the Evin Law and the decree banning smoking in public places. The cause may be good, but I do not think it is good to legislate on a lie. And the worst part is that it does not work: since the entry into force of the decree, cigarette sales are rising again.

Why not speak up earlier?

As a civil servant, dean of the largest medical faculty in France, I was held to confidentiality. If I had deviated from official positions, I would have had to pay the consequences. Today, I am a free man.

Le Parisien

Scientific Evidence Shows Secondhand Smoke Is No Danger

Written By: Jerome Arnett, Jr., M.D.
Published In: Environment & Climate News
Publication Date: July 1, 2008
Publisher:

http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/23399/Scientific_Evidence_Sh…

myth-of-second-hand-smoke

http://yourdoctorsorders.com/2009/01/the-myth-of-second-hand-smoke

BS Alert: The 'third-hand smoke' hoax

http://www.examiner.com/public-policy-in-louisville/bs-alert-the-third-h...

The thirdhand smoke scam

http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2010/02/thirdhand-smoke-scam.ht…

Heart attacks Frauds and Myths..

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7451/

First and foremost, any epidemiologist will admit epidemiology cannot identify causes or 'prove' something, only offer a link for further analysis. In this case, that was done in animal studies. To this day, scientists have not managed to induce lung cancer in any animal through tobacco smoke (excluding the F334 rats and A/J mice, specially bred to develop cancer). What the animal studies routinely do is embarrass researchers by having the animals outlive the non-smoking ones, and in the case of the F334 and A/Js, not only did they outlive the non-smoking ones, those exposed to smoke exceeded the total life expectancy of those breeds, and suffered less cancer than would be expected in them.

Since 1981 there have been 148 reported studies on ETS, involving spouses, children and workplace exposure. 124 of these studies showed no significant causal relationship between second hand smoke and lung cancer. Of the 24 which showed some risk, only two had a Relative Risk Factor over 3.0 and none higher. What does this mean. To put it in perspective, Robert Temple, director of drug evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration said "My basic rule is if the relative risk isn't at least 3 or 4, forget it." The National Cancer Institute states "Relative risks of less than 2 are considered small and are usually difficult to interpret. Such increases may be due to mere chance, statistical bias, or the effect of confounding factors that are sometimes not evident." Dr. Kabat, IAQC epidemiologist states "An association is generally considered weak if the relative risk is under 3.0 and particularly when it is under 2.0, as is the case in the relationship of ETS and lung cancer. Therefore, you can see any concern of second hand smoke causing lung cancer is highly questionable." Note that the Relative Risk (RR) of lung cancer for persons drinking whole milk is 2.14 and all cancers from chlorinated water ranked at 1.25. These are higher risks than the average ETS risk. If we believe second hand smoke to be a danger for lung cancer then we should also never drink milk or chlorinated water.

A federal Judge by the name of osteen got a case dropped in his lap in North Carolina,the case was that of EPA'S study on second hand smoke/environmental tobacco smoke.The judge an anti-tobbaco judge by reputation spent 4 years going thru the study and interviewing scientists at EPA and came to the conclusion :

JUNK SCIENCE

''EPA's 1992 conclusions are not supported by reliable scientific evidence. The report has been largely discredited and, in 1998, was legally vacated by a federal judge.Before its 1992 report, EPA had always used epidemiology's gold standard CI of 95 percent to measure statistical significance. But because the U.S. studies chosen[cherry picked] for the report were not statistically significant within a 95 percent CI, for the first time in its history EPA changed the rules and used a 90 percent CI, which doubled the chance of being wrong.

This allowed it to report a statistically significant 19 percent increase [a 1.19rr] of lung cancer cases in the nonsmoking spouses of smokers over those cases found in nonsmoking spouses of nonsmokers. Even though the RR was only 1.19--an amount far short of what is normally required to demonstrate correlation or causality--the agency concluded this was proof SHS increased the risk of U.S. nonsmokers developing lung cancer by 19 percent.''

The EPA fought to have Osteen's decision overturned on technical grounds, ignoring the multitude of facts in the decision. They succeeded in 2002 on the narrowest of technicalities. The fourth circuit court of appeals ruled that because the report was not an official policy document Osteen's court did not have jurisdiction. In their appeal the EPA did not answer a single criticism in the 92 page report, nor challenge a single fact put forth by Judge Osteen. Not one.

Although the anti-smoker movement was already established, this report was used, and continues to be used, to bolster their claim that SHS is a killer.

About 90% of secondary smoke is composed of water vapor and ordinary air with a minor amount of carbon dioxide. The volume of water vapor of second hand smoke becomes even larger as it qickly disperses into the air,depending upon the humidity factors within a set location indoors or outdoors. Exhaled smoke from a smoker will provide 20% more water vapor to the smoke as it exists the smokers mouth.

4 % is carbon monoxide.

6 % is those supposed 4,000 chemicals to be found in tobacco smoke. Unfortunatley for the smoke free advocates these supposed chemicals are more theorized than actually found.What is found is so small to even call them threats to humans is beyond belief.Nanograms,picograms and femptograms......
(1989 Report of the Surgeon General p. 80).

It must be remembered that 90%+ of lifelong heavy smokers (above a baseline), DO NOT develop lung cancer.

Lung cancer in smokers may be different from lung cancer in nonsmokers: Vancouver study
By PAMELA FAYERMAN, Vancouver Sun November 9, 2010

Lung cancer in smokers has different genetic mutations and looks like a different disease than lung cancer in non-smokers, a team of B.C. Cancer Agency scientists has discovered.

Tumours of those who had never smoked actually had twice as many genetic abnormalities (DNA mutations) as those who were current or former smokers, according to the research presented Tuesday at a conference in Philadelphia of the American Association of Cancer Research. Using gene analysis technologies, the scientists compared tissue samples among comparison groups: 30 individuals who had never smoked and 53 who were either current smokers or former smokers.

Although doctors and scientists have suspected for some time that there were different biological mechanisms underlying lung cancers in smokers and non-smokers, the B.C. study is said to be the first to find whole regions of mutations.

Never-smokers account for up to 15 per cent of lung cancer cases and the research shows that while there were DNA mutations in both never-smokers and smokers, the never smoker tumours had far more alterations. For some unknown reason, never smokers who get lung cancer are more likely to be female.

Study co-author Kelsie Thu said while carcinogens (cancer-causing substances) in cigarettes trigger DNA mutations that lead to cancer cell growth, in non-smokers, it is now apparent there are other mechanisms causing tumour development. Study co-author Raj Chari said the challenge in non-smokers is detecting their cancers earlier since they tend to be diagnosed in the advanced, incurable stages because no one suspects they could possibly have lung cancer.

So Hardly,
Are you trying to argue that smoking is harmless? Or do you not get that if 90% of smokers don't develop lung cancers, they have increased the RISK of dying earlier than expected if they had not smoked, even if the cause of death isn't cancer.

I find it odd that nobody has ever proven tobacco smoking actually causes any diseases as of yet.

I also find it odd that those smoking deaths reported never report the age at death and it seems even odder that to be considered a smoking related death all that has to be known is did the decedent ever smoke in their lifetime...

BTW the longest lived person in the world was a life long smoker at 120 years old.

Now,I wont say direct smoking is safe,but when the overall burden is that most all smokers have no problems in their lifetimes from smoking I have to be extremely wary of the claims of the last 60 years plus!

Supposed smoking related disease are mostly a dose related phenomenon. Now when it comes to second hand smoke I just want to laugh! An irritant at most but deadly,ABSURD!

Lower respiratory infections (relative risk 1.55)
Asthma onset (relative risk 1.32)
Acute otitis media (relative risk 1.38)
For adults, the health outcomes studied were:

Adult-onset asthma (relative risk 1.97)
Lung cancer (relative risk 1.55)
Heart disease (relative risk 1.21)

More ill informed smoker bashing. I do not think the authors would argue with me that smoking over the last 60 years smoking has more than halved (UK 1948 66% of the population, 2009 22.5%) but asthma has risen by 300% (again in the UK). So smoking is not the primary cause of asthma and atopy, I assume the doctorâs cars and industrial pollution. The inconvenient truth is that the only studies of children of smokers suggest it is PROTECTIVE in contracting atopy in the first place. The New Zealand study says by a staggering factor of 82%.

âParticipants with atopic parents were also less likely to have positive SPTs between ages 13 and 32 years if they smoked themselves (OR=0.18), and this reduction in risk remained significant after adjusting for confounders.

The authors write: âWe found that children who were exposed to parental smoking and those who took up cigarette smoking themselves had a lower incidence of atopy to a range of common inhaled allergens.
âThese associations were found only in those with a parental history of asthma or hay fever.â

They conclude: Our findings suggest that preventing allergic sensitization is not one of them.â

http://www.medwire-news.md/â¦/â¦gic_sensitization...

This is a Swedish study.

âChildren of mothers who smoked at least 15 cigarettes a day tended to have lower odds for suffering from allergic rhino-conjunctivitis, allergic asthma, atopic eczema and food allergy, compared to children of mothers who had never smoked (ORs 0.6-0.7)

CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates an association between current exposure to tobacco smoke and a low risk for atopic disorders in smokers themselves and a similar tendency in their children.â

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmâ¦pubmed/ 11422156

In conclusion letâs have a balanced debate and not characterise smokers as race akin to the devil.

There have been 34 studies into lung cancer and exposure to cigarette smoke as a child. 3 suggest a raised risk, nearly four times as many 11 suggest PROTECTION with 20 suggesting no raised or reduced risk. The most famous is the World Health Organization 1998 study which concluded:

"Results: ETS exposure during childhood was not associated with an increased risk of lung cancer (odds ratio [OR] for ever exposure = 0.78; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.64â0.96)."

"Conclusions: Our results indicate no association between childhood exposure to ETS and lung cancer risk."

This actually suggests as the upper limit is <_1 .0 it="it" is="is" a="a" protection="protection" against="against" lung="lung" cancer.="cancer." p="p">

In 2008 this paper was produced in America and concludes that nictotine and hence active smoking and passive smoking leads to less asthma. It also gives the aetiology (causation) why nicotine and the biologial process that reduces asthma in recipients.

The results unequivocally show that, even after multiple allergen sensitizations, nicotine dramatically suppresses inflammatory/allergic parameters in the lung including the following: eosinophilic/lymphocytic emigration; mRNA and/or protein expression of the Th2 cytokines/chemokines IL-4, IL-5, IL-13, IL-25, and eotaxin; leukotriene C4; and total as well as allergen-specific IgE. unequivocally show that, even after multiple allergen sensitizations, nicotine dramatically suppresses inflammatory/allergic parameters in the lung including the following: eosinophilic/lymphocytic emigration; mRNA and/or protein expression of the Th2 cytokines/chemokines IL-4, IL-5, IL-13, IL-25, and eotaxin; leukotriene C4; and total as well as allergen-specific IgE. â

http://www.jimmunol.org/cgi/content/abstract/180/11/7655

I haven't had a cigarette for six weeks and I feel a million times better than I did before (recurring dreams about lovely, lovely cigarettes notwithstanding). Yes it's anecdotal evidence but I'm willing to listen to it on this occasion.

Oh this should be fun. A "no harm from smoking" troll on leads with his chin on Orac's blog.

{grabs popcorn, sits back, waits for (virtual) disemboweling to commence}

Harley,

"I find it odd that nobody has ever proven tobacco smoking actually causes any diseases as of yet"

In science, it's incredibly difficult to directly prove something. What we do have is very strong epidemiological data showing a relationship between smoking and several diseases, as well as a lot of basic science showing how tobacco can affect various pathways in the body leading to these diseases.

"BTW the longest lived person in the world was a life smoker at 120 years old"

To quote a saying repeated many times here: the plural of anecdote is not data. Yes, 90% of smokers may not get cancer, but a lot of them will get other diseases: asthma, COPD. It's also an increased risk factor for coronary heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, strokes and other medical conditions. To solely focus on lung cancer is quite disingenuous.

More ill informed smoker bashing. I do not think the authors would argue with me that smoking over the last 60 years smoking has more than halved (UK 1948 66% of the population, 2009 22.5%) but asthma has risen by 300% (again in the UK). So smoking is not the primary cause of asthma and atopy, I assume the doctorâs cars and industrial pollution. The inconvenient truth is that the only studies of children of smokers suggest it is PROTECTIVE in contracting atopy in the first place. The New Zealand study says by a staggering factor of 82%.

âParticipants with atopic parents were also less likely to have positive SPTs between ages 13 and 32 years if they smoked themselves (OR=0.18), and this reduction in risk remained significant after adjusting for confounders.

The authors write: âWe found that children who were exposed to parental smoking and those who took up cigarette smoking themselves had a lower incidence of atopy to a range of common inhaled allergens.
âThese associations were found only in those with a parental history of asthma or hay fever.â

They conclude: Our findings suggest that preventing allergic sensitization is not one of them.â

This is a Swedish study.

âChildren of mothers who smoked at least 15 cigarettes a day tended to have lower odds for suffering from allergic rhino-conjunctivitis, allergic asthma, atopic eczema and food allergy, compared to children of mothers who had never smoked (ORs 0.6-0.7)

CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates an association between current exposure to tobacco smoke and a low risk for atopic disorders in smokers themselves and a similar tendency in their children.â

There have been 34 studies into lung cancer and exposure to cigarette smoke as a child. 3 suggest a raised risk, nearly four times as many 11 suggest PROTECTION with 20 suggesting no raised or reduced risk. The most famous is the World Health Organization 1998 study which concluded:

"Results: ETS exposure during childhood was not associated with an increased risk of lung cancer (odds ratio [OR] for ever exposure = 0.78; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.64â0.96)."

"Conclusions: Our results indicate no association between childhood exposure to ETS and lung cancer risk."

This actually suggests as the upper limit is <_1 .0 it="it" is="is" a="a" protection="protection" against="against" lung="lung" cancer.="cancer." p="p">

In 2008 this paper was produced in America and concludes that nictotine and hence active smoking and passive smoking leads to less asthma. It also gives the aetiology (causation) why nicotine and the biologial process that reduces asthma in recipients.

The results unequivocally show that, even after multiple allergen sensitizations, nicotine dramatically suppresses inflammatory/allergic parameters in the lung including the following: eosinophilic/lymphocytic emigration; mRNA and/or protein expression of the Th2 cytokines/chemokines IL-4, IL-5, IL-13, IL-25, and eotaxin; leukotriene C4; and total as well as allergen-specific IgE. unequivocally show that, even after multiple allergen sensitizations, nicotine dramatically suppresses inflammatory/allergic parameters in the lung including the following: eosinophilic/lymphocytic emigration; mRNA and/or protein expression of the Th2 cytokines/chemokines IL-4, IL-5, IL-13, IL-25, and eotaxin; leukotriene C4; and total as well as allergen-specific IgE. â

Tobacco smoke does not cause asthma, it is only one of many possible triggers of the symptoms.

The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
Volume 121, Issue 1 , Pages 38-42.e3, January 2008

Methods
Parental history of atopic disease, parental smoking, and personal smoking were obtained at multiple assessments between birth and age 32 years. Atopy was assessed by SPTs for 11 common inhaled allergens at ages 13 and 32 years.

Results
Children of atopic parents were less likely to have positive SPTs at age 13 years if either parent smoked (odds ratio, 0.55; P = .009). This association was not significant after adjusting for breast-feeding history, number of siblings, and childhood socioeconomic status. Subjects with atopic parents were also less likely to develop positive results to SPTs between ages 13 and 32 years if they smoked themselves (odds ratio, 0.18; P < .001). This reduction in risk remained significant after adjusting for multiple potential confounding factors. Neither parental nor personal smoking was significantly associated with allergic sensitization among subjects whose parents did not have a history of atopic disease. Few of those with positive SPT results at age 13 years had negative tests at age 32 years, and there was no evidence that this was influenced by smoking.

Conclusion
Personal and parental smoking is associated with a reduced risk of allergic sensitization in people with a family history of atopy.

In this case, that was done in animal studies. To this day, scientists have not managed to induce lung cancer in any animal through tobacco smoke (excluding the F334 rats and A/J mice, specially bred to develop cancer).

@harleyrider1978: First, you're spamming the comments.

Second, animal studies do not trump epidemiology in humans.

Harleyrider,

It is uncool to flood my comments with cut-and-paste comments. You may still comment, but lots of links and long swaths of cut-and-paste text will get your comments moderated.

In the meantime, I'll be back later after work. I have a day job.

Spamming no,I am making the case from a diferent side of the argument.

Copd is caused by adeno viruses it is being discovered. Google it and especially adeno 14, a virus not seen since the 1950s..leaving smoker and non alike with lung scarred tissue and debilitating pnuemonia and upper respiratory problems that persist.

Epidemiology cannot prove causation and with shs/ets they cant even get to suggestive in their findings unless they lower CI to get an increase in rr.......as was the case with the epa study.....and even then it was only 1.19 rr
a level that should have been laughed off by even the most vehement anti-tobacco propagandist.

Whats truly amazing is how anti-tobacco can keep on preaching a lie such as second hand smoke.By now the world is viewing those who push it as mere propagandists bent upon controlling the lives of everyone as their war on the worlds population moves onto,obesity,alcohol,tran fats etc....there is no end to it...but if you follow the money it all leads back to big pharma aka johnson and johnson!

I am making the case for the other side in the debate and certain points must be made. However,thanks for allowing me to enter into the debate with your article.

Harley-troll. You (and that French guy you quoted)'re assuming that diseases have a single cause. Yes, asthma is worsened by car fumes. It is also worsened by smoke. Yes, heart disease is mostly caused by diet and exercise issues, but *smoking increases the risk of harm*. None of these are mutually exclusive, and (over entire populations) the smoking risk is still significant even if it is small for individuals. Are you just too dumb to get risk and probability, or are you arguing in bad faith?

Revised title: The troll due to secondhand smoke.

Growing up, both of my parents smoked in the house (as did my grandparents and a fair share of my aunts and uncles). My mom smoked while pregnant. They smoked in the car with the windows up (my sister and I would be in the back seat BEGGING for them to at least roll down the window; eventually it would go down about 1/2 an inch and they would claim that all the smoke was escaping through there). I used to declare my bedroom smoke-free and my dad would get pissed and walk in my room with a cigarette anyway. As a kid, I hated the sore throats, the coughing, the watery eyes, and the gasping for air in the back seat of the car. No, I don't have asthma or another second-hand smoker illness that I know of (yet), but that doesn't mean squat. I feel for anyone, especially kids, that have to live with smokers that are in denial about the harm they are causing with their fumes.

but *smoking increases the risk of harm*. None of these are mutually exclusive, and (over entire populations) the smoking risk is still significant even if it is small for individuals. Are you just too dumb to get risk and probability, or are you arguing in bad faith?

Individual harm to shs non-existant = whole populations

You have defined very well what INSIGINIFICANT RISK means......second hand smoke is an insignificant risk factor for anyone,including children.

Your argument is to make a candle seem to be as bright as the sun. The candle being SHS and the sun being the CLAIM.

Kids in Cars. The real Story

Comments to the article and to the CBC Ombudsman;

"In 1975 Sir George Goober, British delegate to the World Health organization
presented his blueprint for eliminating tobacco use worldwide by changing
social attitudes.

"..it would be essential to foster an atmosphere where it was perceived that
active smokers would injure those around them, especially their families and
any infants or young children who would be exposed involuntarily to EST.."

http://lieberaldictators.blogspot.com/

I am extremely disappointed with the obvious decline of credibility and journalistic integrity at the CBC of late. The obvious promotion of the new bandwagon craze to stick it to anyone who smokes, whenever and where ever we can, will permanently place the CBC at the level of the National Inquirer and the infamous reputation of the British scandal rags we love to laugh at.

BTW the smokers being stigmatized and stereotyped here, and in a host of stories you produce, are most significantly; the elderly, Racial minorities and always the poorest in our communities. That I consider a shameful and reprehensible act on your part.

My comments and observations are in respect to the all too often seen tendency of publishing, whatever comes off the news wires, without even a precursory investigation of the source or validity of what you will report.

Today I read an article which reported Doctors are supporting a ban in cars where children are present. The backup to the piece at first glance seemed to indicate a child would be in dire need of protection from hazards of tobacco smoke in high levels inside a vehicle.

The research cited was a name I had never heard of so I thought I would check them out. The group is actually a subset of the American CDC who are responsible for a number of major blunders over the years in connection with fear mongering and exaggerations to a large degree embarrassing themselves and the American government in a number of damage controlled fiascoes.

I took another look at what was being reported in your article and noticed some finely crafted authorship; the 35 ug/m3 was actually particulate not cigarette smoke at all, but of total particulate. The report cited demonstrated no effort to separate the particulate and identify what originated from a cigarette and what was pre-existing in the ambient air. Further the implied health risk did not mention the norm or the allowable levels so I had to help you out again, a quick search demonstrates from more reliable sources the average air quality annual measurements in outdoor air in 1997 was 36.5 ug/m3 and the strictest control regulations are now at 60ug/m3 annual average.

Further there was no discussion of the volumes children actually inhale, of the total volume available. A child's lung capacity @ 6 inhalations a minute of 1/2 liter inhalations, would take 5.6 hours in the car at the stated levels to inhale only 35ug of the total particulate reported, which hardly increases the health risk of that child to any degree. [ug = one Millionth of a gram; One gram = approximately 1 cubic millimeter of water]

What is being proposed by "protecting children" in cars, is an air quality standard inside a car which is far lower than the unavoidable average particulate levels measured outside the vehicle.

Which makes the CBC and anyone else promoting this legislation appear to be; as the CDC has done on many occasions, the dupes who listened to them once again and the scapegoats who will carry the embarrassment when the truth comes to light.

This article amounts to no less than emotional blackmail, utilizing the "protection of children" to sell smoking patches and higher taxation of an addiction incredibly.

The CBC is promoting the punishment of a medical dependency, and lists beside every incident other promotions of that lack of good judgment, as though it were something to be proud of?

I guess it just goes to prove you can't believe anything you hear today and the CBC is no different from the rest. Propaganda and irresponsible fear mongering, will take it's toll. I for one will never again speak in favor of preserving a national broadcaster. We are just paying to subsidize another big business mouthpiece protecting them, by "protecting" us from ourselves.

Just to educate the Editors and their staff;
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/02/15/smoking-ban.html#skip300x250

http://oldfraser.lexi.net/media/media_releases/2000/20000414.html

http://www.nature.com/jes/index.html

http://www.smokershistory.com/

Impressive Gish Gallop The absence of links leads me to suspect quote mining as well.

Given the history of the anti-smoking studies, I assume that all studies of smoking are guilty until proven innocent. You remember the Scotland bar study, right? The one that falsely claimed a 17% drop in cardiac events following a smoking ban? Later analysis showed this to be incorrect (http://tinyurl.com/6qkxkf - yes, its Siegel's site. Deal with it). Health studies have a decisive tendency to do this -- make massive claims that get parroted in the media for a decade or more. Then quietly revise them downward at a later date. (See the CDC's study on obesity deaths or the EPA's first analysis of second-hand smoke)

Harleyrider1978... Henle-Koch's postulates, sweetheart. Henle-Koch's postulates. We (REAL) epidemiologists, those of us with the time and education under our belts, use the modernization of these postulates to come up with a definitive, indisputable answer.

With regards to smoking and lung cancer:
- The incidence of the disease should increase in relation to the duration and intensity of the suspected factor. YES. PEOPLE WHO SMOKE MORE ARE MORE LIKELY TO DEVELOP LUNG CANCER THAN THOSE WHO SMOKE LESS OR DON'T SMOKE AT ALL.
- The distribution of the suspected factor should parallel that of the disease in all relevant aspects. YES. YES. YES.
- A spectrum of illness should be related to exposure to the suspected factor. ALSO, YES. DULY NOTED.
- Reduction or removal of the factor should reduce or stop the disease. ABSOLUTELY. QUITTERS ARE LESS LIKELY TO DEVELOP LUNG CANCER THAN CONTINUING SMOKERS.
- Human populations exposed to the factor in controlled studies should develop the disease more commonly than those not so exposed. YES. KEY HERE, "CONTROLLED STUDIES".

What you keep on quoting doesn't sound kosher in the sense of being actual, honest-to-goodness, controlled studies.

Of course, there was all that "tobacco-funded" research that was hidden for years that actually showed that smoking was hazardous to your health & uncovered as part of the multi-decade tobacco litigation - which resulted in the multi-billion dollar settlement to the government and the states.

...but if you follow the money it all leads back to big pharma aka johnson and johnson!

You want to go down that road? Really?

Reduction or removal of the factor should reduce or stop the disease. ABSOLUTELY. QUITTERS ARE LESS LIKELY TO DEVELOP LUNG CANCER THAN CONTINUING SMOKERS.
- Human populations exposed to the factor in controlled studies should develop the disease more commonly than those not so exposed. YES. KEY HERE, "CONTROLLED STUDIES".

I have a monkey wrench to toss in here........

Are lung cancers triggered by stopping smoking?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/oct/16/highereducation.researc…

Y'all tried Googling "harleyrider1978"?

He's dedicated, that's for sure.

@26 Harleyrider
"The study appears in the journal Medical Hypotheses", which you may not be aware is not generally considered a very reliable source of information: I would describe it as the medical journal equivalent of the National Enquirer.

By the time lung cancer is detected the patient has had it for years, so the hypothesis that smoking cessation instantly produces a detectable tumor seem a little far-fetched. You also have to ask what triggered "an abrupt and recent cessation of the smoking habit". Cough, chest pain, breathlessness, or other symptoms of lung cancer perhaps?

Harley rider--If I stipulate your claim that 90% of smokers don't get lung cancer, that means 10% do, which is a very high percentage for a single kind of cancer. Some of that 90% (as Orac) has noted) get other smoking-related diseases; whether dying of emphysema or a heart attack is in some sense "better" than dying of lung cancer is debatable, but not having any of those problems would clearly be best.

That Guardian question links to Medical Hypotheses: a small study, published there three years ago, with no follow-up that you provide.

No, cancers are not triggered by stopping smoking.

Johnson and Johnson, the makers of Chantix and Nicoderm, fund the bans through their Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-RWJohnsnF.html

Many tax exempt political action committees (charities?) received millions to lobby for smoking bans from the RWJ Foundation. These bans are nothing but clever marketing strategy, with lots of highly publicized "sky is falling" hype.

Tobacco control funding sources for "social change" to handle the "tobacco problem"

http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?ia=143&id=14912

And what the 99 million dollars was going to. Note on page seven the "inside -out", provision going for patios later, AFTER business owners spend thousands of dollars to build them to accommodate their smoking customers. Their many coalitions travel the country spreading bans.
http://www.no-smoke.org/pdf/CIA_Fundamentals.pdf

Since bans didn't help businesses, now they are being given grants to enforce their bans.

http://www.rwjf.org/applications/solicited/cfp.jsp?ID=21181

After closing many bars, temperance is their next goal.

http://alcoholfacts.org/RWJfoundation.html

At the end of the last round of prohibition those who had pushed the prohibition movement with their money and philatrapist dollars created a new scheme by which to start the attack anew...They created the robert woods johnson foundation in 1936 and painted a new beutiful facade of good doings when all along they were biding time to reinstitute prohibition again.....

The acs,ala,aha and a myriad of other groups were established in the 1930s to hide the former prohibitionists progressive movement.Today they are using supposed well respected names in order to push their original goal that failed before ie PROHIBITION.

antismoking crusade of the early-1900s USA was eugenics-driven: Eugenics was mainstream in the USA at this time. At the turn of the last century, eugenics was mainstream in the USA, the UK, some European countries, and a number of Scandinavian countries. The USA appears to be the most prominent. The mega-wealthy in the USA (e.g., Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, Kellogg) were supporters and funders of eugenics (and antismoking, anti-alcohol) â and still are.

harleyrider1978,

You might consider maybe, just maybe thoughts on a comment thread should be mostly your own. Copy-pasting large swaths of text only makes me (and others I am sure) skip over your comments. People will be more likely to take you seriously if you paraphrase the part of the website you are referring to and post a link to said site.

Also, one comment, or two is sufficient. We got your point after the first one.

Experience is their guide, numerically speaking. Of the 312 lung cancer patients they treated during a four-year period, 182 had recently quit smoking. The report goes into detail. "Each had been addicted to the habit no less than 25 years, smoking in excess of 20 sticks a day. The striking direct statistical correlation between cessation of smoking to the development of lung malignancies, more than 60% plus, is too glaring to be dismissed as coincidental.

This was in India,the same 60% factor was also found in new york city by another researcher!

Paul referring to Medical Hypotheses

I would describe it as the medical journal equivalent of the National Enquirer.

This is insulting the National Enquirer. The National Enquirer even quoted Orac's "friend" once in article entitled Dr Oz is a fake.

Oops, forgot that comment numbers change due to moderated comments getting approved.

Militant Agnostic - point taken :-)

Harleyrider - you seem to have missed both my points a) that lung cancer does not appear overnight and b) that people often quit smoking when they get symptoms that may be due to lung cancer.

harleyrider1978 -- you missed the point. You are claiming that *stopping* smoking caused the cancer, and that this means smoking doesn't cause cancer. Yet to *stop* smoking, you have to have *started* first. So you are tacitly admitting that smoking is correlated with lung cancer.

You are also overlooking that a lot of people who smoke try to stop. Statistically, it is probably inevitable that over half of any group of smokers (healthy or otherwise) will have tried quitting recently. Of the ones I know personally, every single one has tried to quit at some point; some are still off the cigarettes, others have ended up back on them. So your "60% of people with lung cancer in this one study had recently quit smoking" is not as meaningful as you think.

By the way, you shouldn't look just at lung cancer. Look also at mouth and throat cancers. These are more instructive, because if I recall correctly, these are very rare in non-tobacco-users, apply also to smokeless tobacco, and are also less of a concern for secondhand smoke -- fewer variables to contend with, in other words.

Of course, whether or not that matters to you depends on how honest you are.

Harleyrider1978 seems to prove that smokers stink, and it is not just the unpleasant smell they emit. Sure, guy, you can smoke all you want, just not in my house and not anywhere near me.

that people often quit smoking when they get symptoms that may be due to lung cancer

Heres what the other docs said......

Kumar, Mallya and Kumar sketch out a possible explanation of what happens. There is, they surmise, a biological mechanism that protects smokers against cancer, that gets exercised and strengthened by years of diligent, heavy smoking. As in habitual marathon running, the body becomes accustomed to suffering grievous damage, and develops habitual ways to fix up whatever breaks down. The smoker's body becomes a sort of lean, puffing, self-damaging-yet-self-repairing machine.

But when a smoker gives up that regular regimen, the body cannot adjust. "It is our premise," say the doctors, "that a surge and spurt in re-activation of bodily healing and repair mechanisms of chronic smoke-damaged respiratory epithelia is induced and spurred by an abrupt discontinuation of habit, goes awry, triggering uncontrolled cell division and tumor genesis

OT ( but is "health freedom" advocacy by woo-meisters *ever* _really_ OT @ RI?) Today Mike Adams ( NaturalNews) puts forth an "Urgent call to action, last chance to defeat S 510 Food Safety Modernization Act", armed with a quote from a Berkeley Free Speech advocate of the '60's. Interestingly enough, although he frequently decries the government, he certainly wants to influence it ( isn't that quite impossible in the "police state" about which he so often rants?) and he *never* disses DSHEA- I wonder why that is? ( similar calls to action by Null, Natural Solutions Foundation**, Citizens for Health, etc.)

** Stubblebine, Laibow,& Fucetola - you know who *they* are !

@HarleyRider1978 #29
Oh, then, yes, God Almighty, a study by three physicians in India outweighs everything else... If you're denser than lead. Did you read the article and the "study" it talks about?
The smokers smoked for 25 years and then quit, and then were diagnosed. Big surprise. By that logic...
Children who move away from houses with high lead levels are more likely to have learning disabilities. No, it wasn't the lead they were exposed to, folks. It was moving away. Likewise, it wasn't the smoking for 20+ years. It was the quitting.
You cannot be serious. You just can't. Surely, you're joking, right? This is a test? Is there a camera somewhere recording my facial expressions as I try to control the bleeding out of my nose from your comments?

Calli Arcale

Im not making the claim,researchers are making the claim and the same outcomes were also found by researchers in new york city......

"As a kid, I hated the sore throats, the coughing, the watery eyes, and the gasping for air in the back seat of the car."

Me too, but today I think of it as a mixed blessing. I've never smoked. Never been even vaguely tempted to pick up a cigarette. My dad's smoke always made me sick and assured that I would be a non-smoker for life. Not because it is a medical risk, just because it's disgusting.

-RR-

While I have no doubt that smoking and heavy exposure to second hand smoke are dangerous to your health, using third world child mortality data to "prove" deadly effects is just bogus. If you breath Beijing air or live in a slum in Nairobi, second hand smoke exposure isn't what's killing you.

Wow. Dude appears to have some issues.

It never fails to amaze me - there's always *someone* to stick up for the Man no matter how egregious his behaviour. HarleyRider1978 is so concerned for those poor, oppressed tobacco companies, it's sort of touching.

After the G20 debacle here in Toronto there was a massive, impromptu protest outside police headquarters. You wouldn't think anyone would oppose it - I mean, who's FOR police brutality and the suspension of civil liberties? But there was a small, vocal collection of counter-protestors, who stood by with hand-lettered signs booing the marchers and giving us the finger.

Yes, there's always someone who's sticking up for the Romans even after they chain him to a dungeon wall.

Wow. An actual smoking causes cancer denier. And not just second hand smoke. There's a species that was once prevalent, but now surely must be severely endangered. You've got a rare specimen on display here Orac.

When you enter a crowded bar in the evening, filled with the stench of a thousand sigarettes, smoked by angry harleyriders that don't want to know that there favorite drug might be a bad thing, it takes more then a couple of bad studies, or an isolated professor, to convince me that the smoke that makes my eye's turn red and painfull is completely harmless.

Sorry but no matter how you reduce yourselves to demeaning me personally,it doesnt change the fact that second hand smoke is an insignificant health risk to anyone,including children!

The truth is out,second hands smoke is a joke.....

Those of you who are promoting it as a killer or a disease causing agent have lost your minds....the studies are against you and the population at large as you further dig a hole which you cannot escape.....the stories and claims on tobacco smoke get crazier with each passing day.thirdhand smoke,4th hand smoke.....keep it up,its working better at making a laughing stock out of tobacco control and their researchers than anything.

I worked on the tobacco litigation & was outstanded by the kinds of evidence we were able to dig out (and was hidden by Big Tobacco for decades) - I really find it hard to believe there are people like Harley still out there, after all of the court cases, the admissions by the tobacco company executives themselves, and all of the medical history. Oh well, we can't all be sane, I guess.

I like cigarettes, or the smell at least. I don't smoke or anything...but the smell is just one of my favorites. I think it reminds me of my childhood or some such nostalgia thing.

(On a side note, I don't deny the health risks or anything, I just personally enjoy the smell. It'd be awesome if someone invented a cigarette scented air freshener; all the pleasant memories and statistically significant lower chances of cancer YAY!)

Im not making the claim,researchers are making the claim and the same outcomes were also found by researchers in new york city......

And once again: nobody is disputing the outcomes. What is being disputed are the conclusions made based on these outcomes. The conclusion are being disputed because there are alternate explanations for the same outcomes (laid out in #31 and #38) which DON'T require a miracle or the unheard of and improbable physiological mechanism the Indian doctors suggest.

Harleyrider - "Kumar, Mallya and Kumar sketch out a possible explanation of what happens."
Here's another possible explanation: lifelong smokers start coughing, getting breathless, quit smoking in a panic and see doctors who diagnose lung cancer. Doctors swallow post hoc fallacy whole, and write a paper that only Medical Hypotheses will publish.

harleyrider1978 @ 43:

Im not making the claim,researchers are making the claim and the same outcomes were also found by researchers in new york city......

It's difficult to tell what claims you're making and what you're plagiarizing. In any case, why quote it if you don't agree with it? Do you not stand by anything you've posted here?

I notice, however, that you did not address my criticism of the claims. Do you agree, then, that it's ridiculous to conclude that stopping smoking causes lung cancer?

Yes, surely, and the fact that the only heavy smoker in my family has astma AND lung cancer is purely anecdotal evidence. So it is for every other person here and all over the world who tells a similar story...

For adults, the definitions of exposure were based on either having a spouse who smokes or regular exposure to tobacco smoke at work and could be further characterized by the number of cigarettes smoked by the spouse, the duration of exposure, or the frequency of exposure in number of days per week.

I'm a little late to the party, but I wanted to add that this seems questionable. I have a "spouse" who smokes (well, we cohabitate and are having a kid together, but we're not legally married). She never smokes in the house, and I seldom go onto the porch to smoke with her. And, of all the smokers I know, this is the norm. I only know one smoker who smokes in the house. So I have to wonder whether this method is really accurate. I guess if "duration of exposure" took into account the possibility of "none, because she smokes outside," then it would be fine.

Wow, that was impressive. Someone who posts that much copy and pasted stuff obviously does not want to discuss anything at all. There is so much stuff posted that it would be impossible to respond to it. I imagine they are sitting back and thinking they have proved everyone wrong. But it is obvious that they do not even understand what they have posted.

I do have the occasional cigarette, I admit it, I like the feeling, but I am not going to sit here and pretend it is good for me or in no way harmful. That would be silly.

Do you not stand by anything you've posted here?

I notice, however, that you did not address my criticism of the claims. Do you agree, then, that it's ridiculous to conclude that stopping smoking causes lung cancer?

I stand by what those doctors stated and its not the only study that states as much. Now do you conclude your remarks are that its not plausible.That the mechanisms in the body can cause that reaction to occur. Or add in that why do non-smokers get lung cancer at all when a 3 pack a day guy for 60 years doesnt......Then we find that non-smokers LC is a completely diferent disease altogether than that of what they claim is tobacco induced LC....and to which they cannot prove tobacco causes (Toxicology wise)....

The only thing ever proven about tobacco smoke is that its an irritant at best.......At least thats how osha and epa both classify it, class 3 irritants.

No the EPA cannot classify shs/ets as a carcinogen for then they would make the federal court case against them valid.

As the epa study was tossed as junk science,but only overturned due to the fact they werent going to use it for a regulatory rule and claiming it a carcinogen would in effect invalidate the appeal court ruling and set aside the entire appeal.....This anti-tobacco could never have.....sorta like when ASH sued osha to make a workplace rule against smoking,not that osha didnt want to do just that its just real world science said shs/ets doesnt meet any level of harm to humans......so they made this statement:

Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)...It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded." -Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec'y, OSHA

Of course so the anti-smoking cartel didnt feel destroyed osha directs folks to the same epa study that was tossed as junk science by a federal court and 2 congressional comittees......

Which tobacco firm or PR agency does the troll work for?

Getting back to the actual topic (as did Joshua): it sounds as though the study doesn't have data on children, only teenagers. "Children" are defined (reasonably, I think) as anyone from birth to age 14. The data on "children" are based on a survey of 13- to 15-year-olds. Even assuming the data are specific enough that they can discard responses from 15-year-olds, data from only 13- and 14-year-olds may not give a good picture of children.

Which tobacco firm or PR agency does the troll work for?

None,I am a retired Navy Chief

You passed a smoking ban in the wrong state.

Never ever make a Chief MADD!

harleyrider's arguments would be a lot more convincing if he had retained the ALL CAPS handle that he employed up there at #22.

Oops, I just realized a problem with my comment @#62. I have rectified it in this comment.

Harleyrider1978:

You passed a smoking ban in the wrong state.

Oh, good grief. What part of the above article has anything about banning smoking in which state? Who is this"you" that your are addressing?

Did you even bother reading the article, or do you just do with irrational cut and paste ranting on every blog that you have set up for a google notice?

By the way, I don't care if you stink up your own home or car, but please keep your noxious fumes out of my face when I am at the bus stop, in a public building, in a restaurant, the store, and any other enclosed space. I remember you idiots lighting up in movie theaters in the 1970s, despite the copious "No Smoking" signs. I breathed a big sigh of relief that our entire row seated to watch the Bakshi's Lord of the Rings in 1978 told the clueless smoker in the next row to put it out!

Of course, Chief, you have no clue that you actually smell bad. This is because you probably have no sense of smell left. After a dentist found mouth cancer in my dad, my dad quit smoking... and then realized that he could start actually tasting food! This was again illustrated in 1987 when my office building went smoke-free. I actually saw a guy walking down the hallway trying to hide a lit cigarette in his hand. I asked him if he was so daft to think we could not smell the smoke trailing from his hand!

You don't want to make a chief Mothers Against Drunk Driving?

@Rene Najera

I was thinking the same thing. Harley seems confused.

D.A.M.M. Drunks Against Mad Mothers

Madd has become just another liberal prohibitionist group.Taken over nearly ten years ago by the anti-alcohol movement pushing .08 instead of .10........One of the robert woods johnson foundations many co-charities they sponsor now......

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Financier of Temperance
by David J. Hanson, Ph.D.
The temperance-oriented Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) "seeks to drive adult beverage consumption underground, away from mainstream culture and public places." 1 It attempts to stigmatize alcohol, de-legitimize drinking, marginalize drinkers, and create a de facto quasi-prohibition of the legal product.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation spent over a quarter of a billion (that's billion, not million) dollars ($265,000,000.00) in just four years alone further developing and funding a nation-wide network of anti-alcohol organizations, centers, activist leaders, and opinion writers to promote its long-term goal.

An in-depth report, Behind the Neo-Prohibition Campaign: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, demonstrates that "nearly every study disparaging adult beverages in the mass media, every legislative push to limit alcohol marketing or increase taxes, and every supposedly 'grassroots' anti-alcohol organization" is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 2 The foundation supports numerous temperance-oriented activists and groups including:

â¢Ralph Hingson, formerly Vice President for Public Policy at Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), who published a deeply flawed report claiming that alcohol causes 1,400 deaths among college students each year. These findings were repudiated by the federal government's General Accountability Office or GAO. Hingson received a $300,000 fellowship from RWJF.

http://www.alcoholfacts.org/RWJfoundation.html

harleyrider1978, you would look less silly if you actually read the article and the comments.

Given his nom de commetator, just imagine what the Chief might think of laws meant to protect one's cranial region whilst riding a two-wheeled motorized conveyance... :-)

One last comment before I'm done reading the Chief (nosebleeds make me sleepy)...

Jesus. Christ. Chief, what mushrooms are you on?

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/11/bachmann_justifies_repeating…

Is harleyrider1978 a 'nym for Michelle Bachmann?

According to the US CDC ex-smokers account for 61% of the yearly lung cancers/deaths.

Data from the American Lung Association shows that about 90% of the ex-smokers quit more than 15 years ago.

The US Surgeon General and the Univ. of Chicago state that ex-smokers that quit more than 15 years ago have the same risk for lung cancer as never-smokers.

Doing the numbers,we find that smokers(current+ex)have a 25% increased risk for lung cancer, RR1.25, as compared to non-smokers(never+ex).

Here is the data and links :
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5644a2.htm

Table 2:
Ex-smokers = 61% of lung cancers

Ex-smokers,15 or more years after quitting, have the same risk for lung cancer as never-smokers.

http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/NN/B/B/D/B/_/nnbbdb.pdf
1990 Surgeon General's Report
Lung Cancer

Page 110
In the British Physicians Study, U.S. Veterans Study, and ACS CPS-II, former smokers
who had been abstinent for 15 years or more showed an 80- to 90-percent reduction in
risk compared with current smokers.

http://stopsmoking.uchicago.edu/benefits.html
Chicago STOP Smoking Research Project
Benefits of Quitting Smoking
Health benefits from quitting smoking:
lung cancer death rate decreases by half in 5 years, and is similar to that of nonsmokers after 10 years

http://www.lungusa.org/finding-cures/our-research/trend-reports/Tobacco…

Using data from the site above(table 3), we see that there were 46 million current smokers in 1990 and 2008.
Using data from table 15, we can figure out that there were 44 million x-smokers in 1990 and 48 million x-smokers in 2008.

This shows that there are 44 million x-smokers with a lung cancer risk similar to never-smokers and 4 million x-smokers with a lung cancer risk similar to current smokers.

courtesy of Gary K.

harleyrider1978 @ 58:

I stand by what those doctors stated and its not the only study that states as much. Now do you conclude your remarks are that its not plausible.That the mechanisms in the body can cause that reaction to occur.

Why do you stand by it? They're overlooking the obvious: that the vast majority of smokers try to quit at some point (most frequently, because of an impending birth in the family) and so it is probably not that unlikely to find 60% of your study group having recently attempted to quit smoking. Especially since people with lung cancer tend to find smoking more painful than people without it.

In other words, yes there is a positive correlation between smoking cessation and lung cancer. But it's not what you think it is. You have it backwards. They're stopping smoking because they have lung cancer.

Or add in that why do non-smokers get lung cancer at all when a 3 pack a day guy for 60 years doesnt......

The most common cause of lung cancer in non-smokers and people not exposed to second-hand smoke is radon gas exposure. It is not surprising that lung cancer occurs in nonsmokers. What is surprising (if you don't believe in a smoking-lung cancer correlation) is how much more frequently it occurs in smokers.

The only thing ever proven about tobacco smoke is that its an irritant at best.......At least thats how osha and epa both classify it, class 3 irritants.

It's been proven to be a carcinogen, not just an irritant. Or how do you explain mouth cancer in users of smokeless tobacco? Mouth cancer is very rare in non-users. Leading cause outside of smoking is the human papilloma virus, and that more commonly causes other cancers.

You did not address that before; are you going to address it now?

Scottynuke #69:

That would make a lot of sense, actually. Certainly explains everything we're seeing here from him; I'd buy it.

it's amazing that you said that nonsmoker lung cancer is different than smoker lung cancer.
if it's true....why might that be? the smoking maybe?
(i apologize for any mistakes. i'm on my phone)

One only has to glance over "harleyrider's" comments (does he actually imagine that people will actually read a lengthy Gish gallop by cut & paste?) to see obvious hallmarks of denialism, such as taking "no significant effect" to mean no effect, or the statistically unsupportable claim that a relative risk less than some specific number is unreliable. That "harleyrider" is a troll is evinced by the fact that he doesn't even bother to respond to Orac's point regarding the fallacy of insisting on a minimum value of relative risk.

Just for reference: here are the facts regarding statistical significance and relative risk:

There is no minimum valid value of relative risk. The smaller the relative risk, the larger a study needs to be to detect that a relative risk is different from 1 with 95% confidence. All legitimate epidemiological studies include confidence limits on relative risk. If those limits are tight, then the statistics are strong. If those limits are wide, then the ability of the study to detect an effect, even if one exists, is weak.

One might argue that a small value of relative risk is not meaningful even if it is statistically significant--and it may not be to an individual who chooses of his own free will to undertake that risk. But as the article Orac refers to makes clear, exposure of enormous numbers of people to modest risks can have huge financial and health consequences.

It is fairly typical in denialist screeds to see a claim that some number of studies "showed no risk." When one actually read the studies in question, one typically discovers that far from actually showing no risk (which would require very tight confidence limits on risk, possible only with a huge number of subjects), the "negative" studies have wide confidence limits that are consistent with either very large or very small risk. It is statistically invalid to say, "There are X positive studies and Y negative studies, so the question is undecided" and statements of this sort are an almost sure indicator of intentional deception. There are well established statistical techniques for combining results of multiple small studies to yield greater statistical power--this is the methodology of meta-analysis. You won't find denialists using meta-analysis, however--they will always insist on cherry picking studies to choose the ones they like and ignore the rest.

It's been proven to be a carcinogen, not just an irritant. Or how do you explain mouth cancer in users of smokeless tobacco? Mouth cancer is very rare in non-users. Leading cause outside of smoking is the human papilloma virus, and that more commonly causes other cancers.

Tobacco smoke has not been proven to be a carcinogen....carcinosis is a dose responce relationship.

You have only correlated snus and chew to mouth cancers not proven causation...

With papilloma its been proven to my understanding,however I will definately pursue it more in depth.

Now when it comes to second hand smoke,you know full well its never been proven to be a carcinogen....dose responce yet again...at what 100,000 times more dilute than mainstream smoke that has still to be proven if it causes actual cancer......correlation again does not prove causation,however it adds to a possibility of it.

A weak rr repeatedly as is the case with shs/ets proves it has no harm to anyone.....If you applied the same concept to anything else say oxygen,youd be laughed out,but at extremely high doses its a carcinogen.....nanograms and femptograms are not going to harm anyone,especially when one considers it takes an average of 5 decades for lung cancer to even show up in smokers if at all.......your ideas that low rr's turn the dose responce facts upside down......in other words your pushing a joke an insult that insults intelligence.......

Air quality testing proves shs is 4 to 25,000 times SAFER than OSHA permissible exposure limits (PEL) IE. Not a workplace health hazard:

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2010/10/air-quality-testing-of-seco…

it's amazing that you said that nonsmoker lung cancer is different than smoker lung cancer

If you go back and read comment 7 you will see whats up!

They have basically destroyed the second hand smoke junk science in one move......Non-smokers LC should be a completely diferent disease entity....as its completely diferent that supposed smokers LC.....that pretty much ends
your low rr's.......and the puts a stake thru the heart of second hand smoke propaganda/psuedo-science!

I would like to know whether I would have been worse off the other day if I'd been inside the pub with our chainsmoking friend than I was sitting outside in a November London drizzle and shivering while she chainsmoked (yes, I should probably consider getting a more thoughtful friend. Our other smoking friends do not drag us outside for the duration while they light up. And yes, I know that it's the impact on pub workers rather than patrons that's the concern.)
Also, I wonder if there's any way to compare the physical effect of secondhand smoke vs the psychological scarring of finding out what the pub *actually smells like*? :)

@76

Denialist hmm, So your a firm believer in creating a fear based upon junk science....I guess I have been in the devils den of anti-tobacco all day. Your trying to prove a negative thru meta studies....take a glass of water,whats its lung cancer risk.......like I said people are laughing at the shs/ets claims and you guys are making it even more of a fallacie with studies like this WHO one....its showing just how desperate the pushers of shs are.....

Insignificant means just that,at least you admit its insignificant,thats a starting place or could it be your paychecks depend on pushing the shs histeria!

@harleyrider1978: At the very least, please learn to quote.

mark makes a claim about OSHA exposure limits, but links to a blog instead of OSHA. Probably isn't true.

Even if it wasn't a health hazard, as a non-smoker I don't want someone else's stinky, cough-inducing, eye-and-lung-irritating habit bothering me. Until they learn to keep the smoke all around themselves and no where else, they can go elsewhere to do it.

U.S. Department of Labor
Occupational Safety & Health Administration

Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS)

Because the organic material in tobacco doesn't burn completely, cigarette smoke contains more than 4,700 chemical compounds. Although OSHA has no regulation that addresses tobacco smoke as a whole, 29 CFR 1910.1000 Air contaminants, limits employee exposure to several of the main chemical components found in tobacco smoke. In normal situations, exposures would not exceed these permissible exposure limits (PELs), and, as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, OSHA will not apply the General Duty Clause to ETS.

For further information to offer to employers/employees as guidance, you may wish to review a document published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about the health effects from environmental tobacco smoke, A Fact Sheet: Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking. Additional information on indoor air quality in general can be found on the Indoor Air Quality Technical Links page on the OSHA website.

Funny how they send you to the same EPA study that was tossed as junk science by a federal court and 2 congressional comittees!

@81

Trying for the old "Conspiracy theory" and the old shill gambit, are you?

You just look pathetic bringing those points up.

Hey harleyrider, why do you need to smoke? Can't you get satisfaction from an e-cig, chaw, nicotine patches or gum? If you really need to indulge yourself, why do you have to subject the rest of us to it. Whether you believe it causes cancer, vascular, cardiopulmonary, oral disease (which it DOES) or not, why not just leave the rest of us out of it? Either way you slice it, smoke is a nuisance. It stinks. It's irritating.

Or are you defending smoking because you feel that somebody needs to be the asshat in the discussion?

I lost two grandparents to smoking-related illnesses: emphysema and congestive heart failure with COPD. Fortunately, tobacco's popularity didn't last long in my parents' home country, and it's not popular in my state.

You big pharma shills are just trying to get more $$$ from Nicoderm sales!

Anywho,

The fact that they are different cancers (assuming it's a fact, you reference a news article. Those don't tend to be all that reliable when it comes to facts) doesn't mean that the dangers of second hand smoke is fake. Also, you say it yourself in 7 that doctors suspected a difference. This is no shock and no "stake thru[sic] the heart" of anything. It's confirming an apparently (at least somewhat) widely held hypothesis that doesn't seem to contradict the dangers of second hand smoke.

I've never seen (well, until now) someone pull out the old "shill" gambit in favor of smoking....again, I worked on the tobacco litigation - I saw the depositions and admissions by the company executives themselves (not including all of the scientific data we got our hands on through the discovery process).

So Harley - you're so full of it, you squeak.

You mean that buried in the vaults of big tobacco,they had research papers that proved thru toxicology that direct smoking causes LC.........LMAO!

I have a feeling they only said what they said as part of a deal,nothing more. Then came the master tobacco settlement
where they were forced by agreement not to say anything against what tobacco control may say in the future....nothing like silencing the competition is there!EHH

There is a difference in cancer types seen in smokers and non-smokers, but they do overlap. Smoking-associated cancers are squamous cell and small-cell undifferentiated. These almost exclusively occur in smokers. Adenocarcinoma and large-cell undifferentiated carcinomas are the most common type found in non-smokers, however, they still have a higher incidence in smokers. Adenocarcinomas have become a higher proportion of cancer types in the last few decades in smokers. There's some speculation that this is because of increased use of filtered cigarettes. This may also have some relevance in the second-hand smoking debate in that squamous and small-cell cancers are associated with heavy exposure, while adeno and large cell tends to occur with lighter exposure i.e. filtered cigarettes, and (speculating here) second-hand smoke. At least some of the non-smoking" cancers may in fact be :second-hand smoking" cancers.

Tobacco smoke has not been proven to be a carcinogen...

This is so blatantly wrong, it's hard to tell where to start.

"Tobacco smoke" is not a single chemical to claim that it is or isn't carcinogenic. It is a mixture of many chemicals, some of which may or may not be carcinogenic. As it turns out, there are multiple chemicals present in tobacco smoke which are carcinogenic. Probably the most well known among toxicologists is benzo(a)pyrene (a tumor initiator), which is highly bioavailable, and the mechanism for genotoxicity is well documented.

There are many other compounds in cigarette smoke which are known to be carcinogenic. Some organ specific carcinogenic chemicals include N'-nitrosonornicotine, nitrosopiperidine, and nitrosopyrrolidine (esophagus); polonium-210, and nickel and cadmium compounds (lung); various nitrosomines (pancreas), and many more.

Also, stating that something is a "dose response relationship" is absolutely meaningless in the context you are using. You may be able to fool laymen with that kind of talk, but I am a professional toxicologist; and to me, you're just making yourself look like a fool.

Just a little bit more about the N'-nitrosonornicotine found in SHS/ETS.

However, the dose makes the poison!!

This stuff is NOT present in quantities known to be hazardous!!!

The concentration of N'-nitrosonornicotine (NNN) ranged from not detected to 23 pg/l, that of N'-nitrosoanata-bine ranged from not detected to 9 pg/l, while 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK) was detected in concentrations ranging from 1 to 29 pg/l.

Thus, non-smokers can be exposed to highly carcinogenic TSNA.

NNN = 0 to 23 picograms per liter

NNK = 0 to 29 picograms per liter

1 cubic meter = 1,000 liters

1 nanogram(NG) = 1,000 picograms

Thus, NNN of 0 to 23 picograms per liter is the same as 0 to 23 nanograms(ng) per cubic meter

NNK of 0 to 29 picograms per liter is the same as 0 to 29 nanograms(ng) per cubic meter.

The question is whether or not 0 to 29 nanograms(ng) per cubic meter of a carcinogenic substance is a dangerous level?

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has concluded that inorganic arsenic is known to be a human carcinogen.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) cites sufficient evidence of a relationship between exposure to arsenic and human cancer. The IARC classification of arsenic is Group 1.

The EPA has determined that inorganic arsenic is a human carcinogen by the inhalation and oral routes, and has assigned it the cancer classification, Group A.

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprof...iles/tp2- c6.pdf
6.4.1 Air

Mean arsenic levels in ambient air in the United States have been reported to range from 20 to 30 ng/m3 in urban areas (Davidson et al. 1985; EPA 1982c; IARC 1980; NAS 1977a).

NOTE: 20 to 30 ng/m3 is NOT stated to be a hazardous level of exposure to this known human carcinogen.

Levels of arsenic in the air generally range from less than 1 to about 2,000 nanograms (1 nanogram equals a billionth of a gram) of arsenic per cubic meter of air (less than 1â2,000 ng/m3), depending on location, weather conditions, and the level of industrial activity in the area. However, urban areas generally have mean arsenic levels in air ranging from 20 to 30 ng/m3.

Both inorganic and organic forms leave your body in your urine. Most of the inorganic arsenic will be gone within several days, although some will remain in your body for several months or even longer. If you are exposed to organic arsenic, most of it will leave your body within several days.

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp2-c1.pdf

To jarred c

from your own blog;

Any toxicologist learns pretty quickly that the âdose makes the poisonâ (generally attributed to Paracelsus, the father of toxicology), and that pretty much everything is toxic at some dose, even if beneficial at lower doses â much of the work of a toxicologist involves determining at just what dose a substance may have harmful effects.

These rules apply to natural substances as well as synthetic chemicals, and in fact a natural substance is just as likely to be toxic as a synthetic chemical. The most toxic substance known (i.e. the substance that requires the smallest dose to be lethal) is botulinum toxin, which is a natural substance produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum. Interestingly, despite being so toxic, it also apparently has some therapeutic uses, as well as being the key ingredient of botox, at even lower doses. Other ânaturalâ substances include lead, arsenic, cyanide, benzene and benzo(a)pyrene (pretty much the âclassicâ carcinogen).

So gasoline,forest fires all release benzene every organic material burned gives off benzene,so I ask you what level is benzene a carcinogen.....then explain it to cigs smoked as to the dose responce curve.

Then perhaps you can explain how in the world second hand smoke could even be considered a carcinogen at all when its diluted 100,000 times more than mainstream smoke...yet it takes decades upon decades for even 8 out of 10,000 smokers to ever develop any cancers to said carcinogens!

CONGRATULATIONS!

Two chemicals in a haze of MANY are, individually, not in quantities that are harmful (assuming you are right).
All it took was yet another wall of text to establish this.

So, harleyrider1978, how much money do you spend per month on tobacco? And is it really worth it?

2 chemicals or 50 or even a thousand,quantity of substance is the issue and exposure.With perhaps an individuals own immunity to said substance,However trying to make a femptogram of something equal to a gram is crazy and thats what second hand smoke science is based upon...rediculous!

The level or dose is what makes an agent a carcinogen not the mere fact it exists in something.

"Funny how they send you to the same EPA study that was tossed as junk science by a federal court and 2 congressional comittees!"

Funny how harleyrider doesn't mention the federal court ruling was overturned by the Fourth Circuit of Appeal. A classic denialist strategy, when one does not have the facts on their side.

How did that work out for the tobacco industry?

http://www.google.com/search?q="harley+davidson+cigarettes"

Dose does make the poison. That is correct. Route of administration also makes the poison. However, one of the key requirements of a toxicologist (and, indeed, any scientist) is the ability to stay on subject when writing/talking/lecturing.

If I am to believe your last post, then N'-nitrosonornicotine is not toxic in ETS because it is not present in amounts known for arsenic to be toxic? I mean, WTF? You do understand that the toxicity of chemicals must be evaluated on an individual level, right? You just can't go around claiming that an organic compound is safe at certain levels because some element (which is not a part of the organic compound) is safe.

On the other hand, you are correct in some aspects. Many of these chemicals present in tobacco smoke (PAH's, nitrosomines, etc) are not toxic at the levels present in a single cigarette. But then again, acute exposure to these chemicals are not what anyone is worried about. It's the chronic exposure over 20+ years.

Now, back to NNN. Since a typical cigarette has about 120ng of NNN (depending on the brand), I can definitely understand your claim that only 9pg/l was detected. For a single cigarette. Now increase the number of cigarettes, while decreasing or limiting the volume, such as the interior of a vehicle, or inside an apartment with all the windows closed. Now add on the rest of the hundreds of chemicals, which stay in the lungs due to the tar (which is always present with low temperature burning of plant material) and ciliatoxic agents (cyanide, formaldehyde, acrolein) - which reduce the clearance of particulates from the lungs.

Jarred its already been done

According to independent Public and Health Policy Research group, Littlewood & Fennel of Austin, Tx, on the subject of secondhand smoke........

They did the figures for what it takes to meet all of OSHA'S minimum PEL'S on shs/ets.......Did it ever set the debate on fire.

They concluded that:

All this is in a small sealed room 9x20 and must occur in ONE HOUR.

For Benzo[a]pyrene, 222,000 cigarettes

"For Acetone, 118,000 cigarettes

"Toluene would require 50,000 packs of simultaneously smoldering cigarettes.

Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up.

"For Hydroquinone, "only" 1250 cigarettes

For arsenic 2 million 500,000 smokers at one time

The same number of cigarettes required for the other so called chemicals in shs/ets will have the same outcomes.

So,OSHA finally makes a statement on shs/ets :

Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)...It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded." -Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec'y, OSHA

Jarred

The proper standard to compare to is the OSHA standard for indoor air quality for respirable particulate (not otherwise specified) for nuisance dusts and smoke. That standard is 5000 ug/m3 on a time-weighted average (8 hours a day, 5 days a week) and is intended to be protective of health over an average working life of 30 years!

I don't know if anyone saw this, but on the same day Orac posted this article, Rush Limbaugh talked on his radio show about it. You can listen to the radio clip here:

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201011290026

Here's a link to the article he's referring to:

http://web.archive.org/web/20021128202555/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ht…

I love that harley is painting the Tobacco industry as the victims of some huge conspiracy, when they've historically been one of the largest & most profitable industries in the country. They spend billions of dollars on advertising & marketing campaigns, along with lobbying of Congress, funding "scientific" studies, etc - yet they were brought down by some left-wing conspiracy against smoking?

All you have to do is look at the internal documents generated by these very companies (executives, scientists, etc)readily admitting that they knew cigarette smoking caused cancer as early as the late 1940's & detailed plans on how to skew the science & public opinion to cover up these facts. I worked on the federal case for years - trust me, at the end of the day, the industry settled because they really didn't want the worst of the worst documents making it into the public record.

It is very hard to argue against the words of the very industry you're trying so hard to protect.

http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/16/3/584.abstrac Research has demonstrated that risk analysis of the known constituents in cigarette smoke explains less than 4% of observed lung cancer risk.

96% of smokers' lung cancer is not explained by the chemicals in cigarette smoke.

..............................................

Arsenic, for instance, is known to cause lung cancer in humans.

According to the Centers for Disease Control:

"You normally take in small amounts of arsenic in the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the food you eat.

The total amount of arsenic you take in from these sources is generally about 50 micrograms (1 microgram equals one-millionth of a gram) each day."
www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/phs2.html

50 micrograms is 50,000 nanograms.The average cigarette has 32nanograms of arsenic in all of it's smoke (mainstream and side stream).

Those numbers about the amount of the chemicals in cigarette smoke come from 'The Massachusetts Benchmark Study, Final Report 07/24/00'

If a pack/day smoker inhaled ALL of the smoke from their 20 cigarettes, that would only be 1.26% of their TOTAL arsenic exposure.

Benzene is the real chemical in cigs that smokers are at risk of. But then,over decades and decades 92% of smokers get no cancers.Something else is obviously going on!

So Harley, what's your take on AGW? Is that a conspiracy too? 9/11--was that an inside job? Was the moon landing faked in a Hollywood studio?

C'mon, Harley, Enquiring minds wanna know!

harleyrider @3

As a civil servant, dean of the largest medical faculty in France, I was held to confidentiality. If I had deviated from official positions, I would have had to pay the consequences. Today, I am a free man.

harleyrider @61

None,I am a retired Navy Chief

BTW I searched for a phrase from one of his comments and found it in over 30 other places. I couldn't be bothered to find out if he was plagiarizing or spamming.

I'm curious: there was a lot of press (at least locally) a couple years ago after several Colorado cities instituted smoking bans, and found that rates of coronary problems plummeted. Of course the media accounts were about as superficial as you'd expect. Does anyone know if there's been any actual research on the topic?

One thing I find interesting is that haleyrider1978 is using the same fallacies as the antivaxxers, but from the opposite side. It's still a case of "find the numbers that make your argument resemble a plausible one, and then hammer on them so people don't stop to notice that you're taking them out of context".

The antivaxxers take recommended limits for chronic exposure to methylmercury and use these to make an argument about acute exposure to ethylmercury.

harleyrider1978 takes limits for acute exposure to various tobacco constituents and uses them to make an argument about chronic exposure. (And, quixotically, he also uses information about chemicals not present in tobacco. This one-ups the anti-vaxxers using methylmercury to argue against ethylmercury, I guess, but is otherwise of little value.)

The most amusing part, however, is how he acts as though he has made some great clever point, and is oblivious to how completely he has failed to convince anyone of anything apart from his own incompetence. The Dunning-Kruger effect writ large.

One thing I find interesting is that haleyrider1978 is using the same fallacies as the antivaxxers, but from the opposite side. It's still a case of "find the numbers that make your argument resemble a plausible one, and then hammer on them so people don't stop to notice that you're taking them out of context".

The antivaxxers take recommended limits for chronic exposure to methylmercury and use these to make an argument about acute exposure to ethylmercury.

harleyrider1978 takes limits for acute exposure to various tobacco constituents and uses them to make an argument about chronic exposure. (And, quixotically, he also uses information about chemicals not present in tobacco. This one-ups the anti-vaxxers using methylmercury to argue against ethylmercury, I guess, but is otherwise of little value.)

The most amusing part, however, is how he acts as though he has made some great clever point, and is oblivious to how completely he has failed to convince anyone of anything apart from his own incompetence. The Dunning-Kruger effect writ large.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w14790.pdf

NBER researchers which found that heart attacks rates are just as likely to increase as to decrease after the imposition of smoking bans. The study, CHANGES IN U.S HOSPITALIZATION AND MORTALITY RATES FOLLOWING
SMOKING BANS, concludes:

"U.S. state and local governments are increasingly restricting smoking in public places. This paper analyzes nationally representative databases, including the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, to compare short-term changes in mortality and hospitalization rates in smoking-restricted regions with control regions. In contrast with smaller regional studies, we find that workplace bans are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines in mortality or hospital admissions for myocardial infarction
or other diseases. An analysis simulating smaller studies using subsamples reveals that large short-term increases in myocardial infarction incidence following a workplace ban are as common as the large decreases reported in the published literature."

The researchers further suggest:

"We also show that there is wide year-to-year variation in myocardial infarction death and admission rates even in large regions such as counties and hospital catchment areas. Comparisons of small samples (which represent subsamples of our data and are similar to the samples used in the previous published literature) might have led to atypical findings. It is also possible that comparisons showing increases in cardiovascular events after a smoking ban were not submitted for publication because
the results were considered implausible. Hence, the true distribution from single 23 regions would include both increases and decreases in events and a mean close to zero, while the published record would show only decreases in events. Thus, publication bias could plausibly explain why dramatic short-term public health improvements were seen in prior studies of smoking bans."

In this thread, there have been 109 posts (so far) over a period of 29 hours. harleyrider1978 has made 33 of those posts, just under a third of the total, averaging more than 1 per hour.

If anyone wanted to see a case of desperately protective rationalization out in the wild, we have a trophy specimen right here.

harleyrider

Benzene is the real chemical in cigs that smokers are at risk of. But then,over decades and decades 92% of smokers get no cancers.Something else is obviously going on!

Wow! As, according to WHO, 13% of the total population dies from cancer and to this we need to add those who develop a cancer without it killing them, this clearly shows that smoking is beneficial. Someone needs to type less and think more.

blf wrote:

Which tobacco firm or PR agency does the troll work for?

None, I expect. Big Tobacco didn't become big by being idiots, and, from a sales perspective, there's got to be a hundred different things to do in a hundred different venues that are less pointless than Harleytroll's crusade of stupidity.

But then,over decades and decades 92% of smokers get no cancers.Something else is obviously going on!

They drop dead from heart disease and strokes before they develop cancer?

@107 - the first bit about dean of the largest medical faculty in France is not Harleytroll speaking, but some cut and paste "argument from authority" text (with no link provided of course). Odds are it is some bogus urban legend type stuff that gets circulated among his ilk.

Drastic measures have to be taken to reduce the manufacture of cigarettes. Research is required to develop methods of kicking the smoking habit. The hazards of smoking and inhaling second hand smoke has been known for years. But nothing much has been done.
http://rareremedies.blogspot.com

Drastic measures have to be taken to reduce the manufacture of cigarettes. Research is required to develop methods of kicking the smoking habit. The hazards of smoking and inhaling second hand smoke have been known for years. But nothing much has been done.
http://rareremedies.blogspot.com

They drop dead from heart disease and strokes before they develop cancer?

I lean more towards alien abduction. It would explain much about Harley the Spambot.

I've never seen (well, until now) someone pull out the old "shill" gambit in favor of smoking.

A classic debating tactic, when you know that you are vulnerable, is to accuse your opponent first of whatever you know you are guilty of. That way, if they try to bring it up, it sounds like mere tu quoque. In the case of tobacco, the role of the tobacco industry in generating fake "doubt" regarding the harms of tobacco was revealed in discovery during the civil suits, and documented thoroughly in Oreskes' "Merchants of Doubt". We know, for instance, that the term "junk science" was invented by tobacco industry strategists, and promoted with tobacco funding by Steve Milloy via the junkscience.com website, the source of the claims being promoted by harleyrider

Harley:

The proper standard to compare to is the OSHA standard for indoor air quality for respirable particulate (not otherwise specified) for nuisance dusts and smoke. That standard is 5000 ug/m3 on a time-weighted average (8 hours a day, 5 days a week) and is intended to be protective of health over an average working life of 30 years!

1) OSHA is not the proper comparison. The OSHA standard is for working environments. It assumes an average day job. People who are at risk for second hand smoke are not at risk due to working around it; they are at risk from parents or loved-ones. The high risk category would be for the majority of the day (16 hours?), 7 days per week. Unless you are specifically looking at the risk of ETS in the workplace, that it.

2) The proper standard of comparison is not OSHA's standard on dust/smoke particulates, but rather OSHA'a and NIOSH's ETS report; since, yes, they actually do have a report on ETS. Unless you're trying to make the claim that OSHA is correct on all things they do, except ETS; which would be a rather odd claim.

3) In your post previous to the one I quoted, you are confusing acute exposure to chronic exposure. Since you obviously do not understand the difference, I'll explain:

An acute exposure is a one time exposure which may cause a toxic effect. A chronic exposure is a smaller continuous exposure which may cause a toxic effect. Note that chronic exposures are less than acute exposures; the typical single exposure from a chronic condition would not be enough to produce an acute toxic effect.

I say this to you in hopes of enlightening you, since you obviously do not understand that ONE HOUR does not constitute chronic exposure. It is classified as an acute exposure. So the list of the number of cigarettes you quoted would be the amount a person would need to develop a toxic effect from an acute exposure.

To help you in your future copy/paste expeditions and your future debates with other learned people, just remember that acute =/= chronic.

It's been a busy day here in the Pathology Dept.

I've already diagnosed three new lung cancers, one small cell carcinoma and two non-small cell carcinomas. One of the patients is in for emergency radiation therapy to try to shrink the tumor that is causing compression of his spinal cord.

What do these three people have in common? Yep, a history of smoking. Just like the vast majority of people in whom I see lung cancer.

Must be that "small sample" effect, huh harleyrider? Maybe you can petition the "National Bureau of Economic Research" (cited previously) to do a study on how there's not really a link between smoking and lung cancer.

And do stay away from motorcycle helmets - they're just a plot by The Man to inhibit your freedom - nothing to do with preventing grievous head injuries.

harleyrider writes Research has demonstrated that risk analysis of the known constituents in cigarette smoke explains less than 4% of observed lung cancer risk.

96% of smokers' lung cancer is not explained by the chemicals in cigarette smoke.

He chooses not to disclose that this was not the conclusion of the paper he cited (note: it is perfectly acceptable to cite the data from a paper and disagree with the authors' conclusions, so long as you acknowledge that fact. But to cite a paper in support of an assertion of your own, while failing to disclose that the authors disagree with you is, to put it kindly, less than honest).

Here's what the authors say:

Any given sample of tobacco smoke is a very complex mixture. When there is simultaneous exposure to a specific known set of carcinogens (and especially when the carcinogens share the same mode of action), prediction of the total risk has often proceeded by a simple additivity model....
Unfortunately, there is limited knowledge about how multiple carcinogens actually affect organisms (e.g., the extent to which the carcinogens act independently or interact synergistically). In addition, in the case of tobacco smoke, irritation from the smoke can lead to increased cell proliferation and thus increased likelihood of tumor development

also..

Overall, even allowing for some differences between machine and representative human smoking conditions (see above), the match values obtained here indicate that the subSigma lung estimates of cancer risk from conventional cigarettes that can currently be calculated are either (a) too low (e.g., as due to incorrect CSF values) or (b) quite incomplete due to incomplete consideration of the roles of important carcinogens, cancer promoters, and/or irritant chemicals that promote cell proliferation

The authors conclude that because of the limitations of the model, it is not possible to predict whether tobacco products designed to reduce carcinogen exposure will result in a reduction in the well-established risks of tobacco use. Note that this is essentially the opposite of what harleyrider is asserting, which is that the dose-response relationship for tobacco smoke is so well understood that it is possible to dismiss the risks of environmental tobacco smoke.

In fact, the authors' conclusions actually support Jarred C's argument rather than harleyrider's. (I should add that determination of dose-response relationships is my own area of expertise, and I concur with Jarred C).

But then,over decades and decades 92% of smokers get no cancers. Something else is obviously going on!

And in other news, not wearing your seatbelt cannot be a risk factor for being thrown from your car, because over decades and decades most people who don't wear their seatbelts are never thrown from their cars. Something else is obviously going on!

OSHA is not the proper comparison. The OSHA standard is for working environments. It assumes an average day job. People who are at risk for second hand smoke are not at risk due to working around it.

So then,you agree these laws are a waste of time,I happen to agree with you!

Smoke-Free Workplace Law is primarily intended to protect workers from health hazards resulting from exposure to secondhand smoke.

Even exposures in the home couldnt stand up,the congressional research office concluded:
â¢the statistical evidence does not appear to support a conclusion that there are substantial health effects of passive smoking;
â¢it is possible that very few or even no deaths can be attributed to ETS;
â¢if there are any lung cancer deaths from ETS exposure, they are likely to be concentrated among those subjected to the highest exposure levels... primarily among those nonsmokers subjected to significant spousal ETS.
â¢Even when overall risk is considered, it is a very small risk and is not statistically significant at a conventional 95% level.
According to the CRS, basing an assessment on only the most pessimistic study of those reviewed, exposure only to background ETS (as in workplaces and bars) creates a lifetime risk of about 7/100ths of a percent of dying from ETS related cancer.

Additional studies also undercut key assumptions in the "estimates" of the 63,000 victim "death toll" espoused by anti-smoking forces. The WHO's International Agency on Research on Cancer published a 1998 study that ran for 10 years, covering 7 different countries, concluding that there is no statistically significant risk for non-smokers who lived or worked with smokers.

http://iarnuocon.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/17/1028570-secondhand-smoke…

Its hard to make a case for any smoking bans anywhere when the evidence isnt there to begin with.

The latest niosh study on casino workers
is more a political anti-smoking study than a medical study....

There former findings after 10 years concluded the shs studies didnt cut the grade to show any cause for alarm and ended with osha making the final say as greg watchman stated above.

Be it acute or chronic exposure causation cannot be shown for any of the claims made.

Those same casino workers tested are the same ones trying to sue over second hand smoke in court against the casino owners.

Those same casino workers worked diligently on harry reid and hillary clintons campaigns.

The study came after the democrats took over the congress and the senate.

politics and science = Junk Science and laws.

It appears the solution is going to be a political one rather than sound science!

Remember 1933 as FDR repealed prohibition. Look to the future as history again repeats itself.

Oh and did I say,we had tobacco prohibition before too!

1901: REGULATION: Strong anti-cigarette activity in 43 of the 45 states. "Only Wyoming and Louisiana had paid no attention to the cigarette controversy, while the other forty-three states either already had anti-cigarette laws on the books or were considering new or tougher anti-cigarette laws, or were the scenes of heavy anti- cigarette activity" (Dillow, 1981:10).

1917: SMOKEFREE: Tobacco control laws have fallen, including smoking bans in numerous cities, and the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho and Tennessee.

But then,over decades and decades 92% of smokers get no cancers.

[Disclaimer: I was preparing a D&D game, so it may have affected my view of the world]

I like to think of the risk to get an illness as rolling a 1 with the dice of life.
The catch is, some people are rolling a 6-sided die, some other a 20-sided die, and some very unlucky ones are flipping a coin.
What medicine is doing is trying to figure out what will give us bigger or smaller dice.
If you don't smoke, maybe you have a d100 when it comes to lung cancer. If you smoke, it looks more like a d12. If you smoke and have some aggravating factor, like a genetic predisposition, you get a d4.
(random dice numbers, I'm not so deep into dice as to calculate the required number of sides for a perfect analogy)

Any veteran RPGamer knows that no matter how big your dice are, there is always a chance to roll a 1. Still, bigger dice are better. But eventually, you will fudge a dice roll.

Considering the obviously tobacco industry propaganda to undercut the clear scientific case on this, let me make one based on civil rights. There is no, absolutely no, right of a smoker to impinge on the right of a non-smoker to breathe the air which is the common property of us all, with their habit. The right to breathe clean air in its natural state is a right that is superior to the right of a smoker to impose their habit on other people in an intentional act that is purely optional.

Clearly science needs to tighten its rules quite a bit about the role that interested sponsorship plays in what gets accepted as science. Without making and effectively enforcing rules against that, the reputation of science will suffer from the consequences of unreliable "science" being promulgated. And that's as true of the "science" bought by industry for fraud in other areas as well.

If there were a right to clean air thered be no cars,trucks,planes,jets,ships,coal fired steam plants,trains etc etc......The air is self cleaning as is proven by mother nature and her weather patterns.

When Mt. St. Helens blew up,they claimed at the time it dumped a million times more pollution into the air than mankind has since his existence on earth, yet mother nature cleaned it all up in short order,the same applies to just opening a window or door to a building where tobacco smoking is concerned.

We evolved from campfires of caves into the most advanced civilization ever known on earth,Yet we survived and thrived despite all of our own creations and those of this world itself........

Civil rights for some,equal rights for some,no rights for smokers.......I get your exclusive club now!

And you worry about a lil tobacco smoke.....amazing!

Oh joy, A. McCarthy vs. harleyrider.

Can't wait to see what happens.

Alright. someone has to do it, might as well be the guy with no career or reputation.

god harley, you are a fucking retard. seriously. ''smokers get no rights boo hoo hoo''
fucking imbecile.

harleyrider1978:

Given such lucid arguments as "The air is self cleaning as is proven by mother nature and her weather patterns," and "Civil rights for some,equal rights for some,no rights for smokers," please explain to me why it is not acceptable to drop trou in any public venue and defecate? It's even more natural than smoking, been done by animals long before man, yet here we are, in today's modern world, all worried about a little feces.

It may stink a bit, but (usually) no more or less than your average cigarette. So long as you don't touch it, there's no chance of any contamination. Next time it rains, it should be washed away completely. Yet again, mother nature and her weather patterns clean up our messes. So why can't we just defecate wherever we want? We evolved from campfires of caves*, the depths of which our ancestors used as convenient indoor toilets, and yet we have survived and thrived despite all of our defiance of one of nature's primary rules: Don't defecate where you eat/sleep.

So why this vendetta against those who just want to do what comes naturally? Honestly, civil rights for some, equal rights for some, no rights for defecators. I get your executive bathroom now!

And you worry about a lil feces on the ground. Amazing!

* I must admit, I thought we actually evolved from proto-apes (or pre-apes; paradoxically, pre-apism is partly about not walking erect all the time...)

Feces as a counter,hmm thats a new one....

You make a good point against outdoor smoking bans!

However,indoor excreting would lead to flies carrying diseases right into your food or drink.......a very real threat.Even cave dwellers knew to toss the garbage and excrement into a pit as has been proven thru archiological dig sites...

Smoke is easily removed from any indoor facilty and is one of our greater accomplishments as a people,air handling equipment.......windows and doors are another great inovation. Its ashame though that you cant seem to make a personal choise to stay away from smoking venues since you despise it so or simply use ancient inventions like an open door or window.But of course that happens all the time as customes enter and exit from a smoking venue and lets not forget that grill hood in the back of the restaraunt suckingnot only cooking smoke out but also another route for tobacco smoke to escape.....

If youâre afraid of second-hand smoke, you should also avoid cars, restaurantsâ¦and donât even think of barbecuing.

here are just some of the chemicals present in tobacco smoke and what else contains them:

Arsenic, Benzine, Formaldehyde.

Arsenic- 8 glasses of water = 200 cigarettes worth of arsenic

Benzine- Grilling of one burger = 250 cigarettes

Formaldehyde â cooking a vegetarian meal = 100 cigarettes

And so on. You can stay at home all day long if you donât want all those âdeadlyâ chemicals around you, but in fact, those alleged 4000 chemicals in cigarettes are present in many foods, paints etc. in much larger quantities. And as they are present in cigarettes in very small doses, they are harmless. Sorry, no matter how much you like the notion of harmful ETS, itâs a myth.

What may even be more alarming to you is that in second hand smoke those supposed 4000 chemicals only comprise 6% of the total smoke.....SG report 1989

harleyrider: "And you worry about a lil tobacco smoke.....amazing!"

This is classic smoker wheedling. "Ooh, it's just a little smoke. Just a little extra cancer risk for you nonsmokers. You tolerated it before. How come you won't now? It's unfair! C'mon, how about a little more cancer? Pleeeze?"

Nope.

Yesterday in my pathology practice I believe I tied or came close to a personal record for most new lung cancers diagnosed in a day - four. All of them (including the guy who needed emergency radiation therapy to relieve tumor pressure on his spinal cord) had one thing in common - smoking history.

Do continue with the denial, harleyrider. By the way, do you ride your bike without a helmet, demonstrating to the Man that you won't be controlled? The good thing about it is you'd be more likely to miss out on tobacco-related heart disease and cancer, succumbingly prematurely to head injury (though a lot of these folks live for long periods with extreme disability).

Who is the "they" that claimed that Mount Saint Helens was more pollution than all of human industrial history, what is their source of data, and why are you taking them seriously?

Pollution is not a single thing: there are chemicals in tobacco smoke that aren't in volcanic eruptions or automobile exhaust. Mercury and lead each have effects different from nicotine or acid rain.

And none of them contain strontium-90.

As Steve Martin said: No, I don't mind if you smoke...mind if I fart?

actually i find objects that hung in a dinning room where there was smoking to be far more drity then objects that where above a fire place mantle for decades. also the objects that lived with smokers are covered in a yellow sticky substance that is not found on the objects what lived with non smokers. i wonder what that yellow sticky substance is and where it came from i think it is grimlems couldn't be smokers or cigerates. cigerate smoke is differant from smoke from a fire or candales or a fire place not like this information will change your mind at all i think if the collration was 95% for lung cancer and smoking you would still say they aren't that bad and don't kill people go ahead and smoke it doesn't bother me just stop with the wall of text it is unreadable and proves nothing

cigerate smoke is differant from smoke from a fire or candales or a fire place

OSHA permissible exposure limit (PEL), 8-hour for airborne arsenic

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Public_Health_ Statement_ for_Arsenic

Finally, OSHA has established a permissible exposure limit (PEL), 8-hour time-weighted average, of 10 µg/m3 for airborne arsenic in various workplaces.
............ ......... ......... ......... .....

This is the PEL (permissible exposure limit), below which the chemical is considered safe.

And OSHA is being very conservative. According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, no symptoms are evident below âabout 100 ug.â

1 ug is one microgram= 1 millionth of a gram, 1 ng is one nanogram = 1 billionth of a gram.

1 ug = 1,000 ng.

10 ug =10,000 ng.

The average cigarette has 32ng of arsenic in all of it's smoke(mainstream and side stream).

10 ug per cubic meter is all of the smoke from 312.5 cigarettes per cubic meter ,on average,continuousl y for an 8 hour work shift .

Consider a bar that 30 feet by 60 feet with a 12 foot ceiling, this is about 10 meters by 20 meters by 4 meters, this equals about 800 cubic meters.

That bar would have to have 800 x 312.5 cigarettes burning all the time.

This is 250,000 cigarettes burning all of the time.

Remember; according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, no symptoms are evident below âabout 100 ug.â

That means you would have to have about 2,500,000 smokers smoking continuously for 8 hours to reach the minimum harm level in our little bar!!

Which is why OSHA has stated that it's well-nigh impossible to find any actual workplace where its PELs for secondhand smoke or any constituent thereof would be met, let alone exceeded.

âThe point I'm trying to make is that while "Arsenic" is a 'poison' and even a 'carcinogen' it's neither at these doses. And further, people's normal exposure from other sources is greater by great amounts.â

The same kind of calculations can be made for every "poison" and "toxin" in SHS !!

have just run across some information that has totally changed my mind. It has been verified through several sources. I'm sure it will change yours too after you read it.

"* Contributes to health problems from inhaling particulate matter or ingesting harmful chemicals.
* Spews hazardous chemicals ....Acetone, Benzene, Trichlorofluoromethane, Carbon Disulfide, 2-Butanone, Trichloroethane, Trichloroethene, Carbon Tetrachloride, Tetrachloroethene, Toluene, Chlorobenzene, Ethylbenzene, Styrene, Xylene, Phenol, Cresol, Cyclopentene and Lead.

there are at least 4 cancer-causing chemicals associated with ..... The EPA lists these chemicals on their website:
1) Benzene (EPA classification as Group A, known human carcinogen).
2) Carbon Tetrachloride (EPA classification as Group B2 probable human carcinogen).
3) Trichloroethane (EPA classification as Group C, possible human carcinogen).
4) Toluene (EPA classification as Group B2 probable human carcinogen)."

http://www.touchoflovecandles.com/abo...

That scares the heck out of me! I will never again visit a place that allows this out of fear for my health!

Smoking is dangerous.... Oops! Sorry.. My bad...

That article is all about burning paraffin based candles, not smoking!

BAN THE CANDLE!!!!!!

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/tooth-fairy.h…

radioactive strontium-90 (Sr-90)

This has sometimes been referred to as âThe Tooth Fairy Project.â However, numerous peer-reviewed, scientific studies do not substantiate such claims.

yes. cavepeople got rid of excrement. like we did with indoor smoking. you make a good case for smoking bans
youre still a fucking dipshit.

If there were a right to clean air thered be no cars,trucks,planes,jets,ships,coal fired steam plants,trains etc etc...

So your argument is what? Two wrongs make a right?

The air is self cleaning as is proven by mother nature and her weather patterns.

Never mind actual measurements of pollutants in air or correlation with human illnesses with air pollution measurements.

Yes the air is self cleaning...eventually. Unfortunately, that is little consolation if it gets to my lungs before it gets clean.

Smoke is easily removed from any indoor facilty and is one of our greater accomplishments as a people,air handling equipment.......windows and doors are another great inovation. ...But of course that happens all the time as customes enter and exit from a smoking venue and lets not forget that grill hood in the back of the restaraunt suckingnot only cooking smoke out but also another route for tobacco smoke to escape.....

And it's a good thing that there are no people between the smoker and any of these outlets that could possibly breathe in the smoke before it escapes.

If there were a right to clean air thered be no cars,trucks,planes,jets,ships,coal fired steam plants,trains etc etc...

Ever heard of emission controls? Catalytic converters? And, last time I checked, there is a pretty large percentage of the population that would like to see coal-powered generators phased out far quicker than they already are.

It must be terrible, as a smoker, to be unable to smoke in your own home. To face arrest for just the possession of a cigarette. To have to buy all your smokes on the black market because nobody sells them openly.

Oh, they don't do that. You poor smokers are so-o-o oppressed. snif.

Ever heard of emission controls? Catalytic converters? And, last time I checked, there is a pretty large percentage of the population that would like to see coal-powered generators phased out far quicker than they already are.

You make good points for air handling equipment........for everything there is an alternative than criminalization....or prohibition....But ol james repace did a good job of gun decking certain studies over at ashrae........ya I got the breakdwn of what he did,he is the guy who made the statement itd take tornadic winds to remoce tobacco smoke to a safe level......you rabid anti-smokers have some really wild claims.....just like 3rd hand smoke....then came 4th hand smoke.......at what point do you yourself start to go wait thats absolutely NUTZ.....at what point do you think hey we went to far......will massive black market sales of smokes do it,will it take rapes of women who went outside to smoke to convince you look what weve done.......will it take murders of innocent smokers and non-smokers in alleys behind bars smoking to convince you.........think man rediculous has passed,anti-tobacco is now in the insanity range!

Besides all that,bootleggers dont card kids.

So now harleyrider invokes, of all things, the Tooth Fairy Project? Talk about complete context-free cluelessness...

Oh Irony, where is thy sting?

*off to find more coffee*

harleyrider1978, good to see you're not falling into the old slippery slope fallacy!

you rabid anti-smokers have some really wild claims

Followed immediately by:

.....just like 3rd hand smoke....then came 4th hand smoke.......at what point do you yourself start to go wait thats absolutely NUTZ.....at what point do you think hey we went to far......will massive black market sales of smokes do it,will it take rapes of women who went outside to smoke to convince you look what weve done.......will it take murders of innocent smokers and non-smokers in alleys behind bars smoking to convince you.........think man rediculous has passed,anti-tobacco is now in the insanity range!

Um...

BTW, you don't happen to have a shrine dedicated to Dave Hitt, do you?

Also, it might well take tornadic wind forces to pull smoky air from the dining area into the kitchen and up a range-top exhaust fan, as you mentioned. Exhaust vents in the ceiling of the establishment would certainly allow quick and easy egress for any noxious fumes, but that's about the only method you haven't mentioned.

This whole "debate" reminds me of Spider Robinson's The Crazy Years: a collection of articles he wrote at the turn of the millennium, with some very sensible and cogent observations, but tended to veer into the crazy himself whenever he wrote about anti-smokers (at one point he compared the notion that smokers have a smell to his racist [parent/grandparent/other relative - the book's not at hand]'s assertion that black people have a distinct smell - why, sure, Spider, cigarette smoke doesn't smell at all, and it never sticks to anything!).

What? Nobody called harleyrider1978 for his use of "Environment & Climate News" and the Heartland Institute website?

The Heartland Institute is the Tobacco Institute of climate change denial. They also serve as the Tobacco Institute of second-hand smoke harm denial, in a pinch, since the Tobacco Institute was shut down in 1998 as part of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.

Funding from Philip Morris.

harleyrider1978 is a dupe or a shill.

Climategate shut down global warming,anti-tobacco groups and their own propaganda studies are destroying themselves.

Insignificant means just that,especially when we see a glass of tap water has the same rr as trumped up shs!

GIGO GARBAGE IN GARBAGE OUT is the science of second hand smoke!

PRUDEN: Turn out the lights, the party's over

Scams die hard, but eventually they die, and when they do, nobody wants to get close to the corpse. You can get all the hotel rooms you want this week in Cancun.

The global-warming caravan has moved on, bound for a destination in oblivion. The United Nations is hanging the usual lamb chop in the window this week in Mexico for the U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, but the Washington guests are staying home. Nobody wants to get the smell of the corpse on their clothes.

Everybody who imagined himself anybody raced to Copenhagen last year for the global-warming summit, renamed "climate change" when the globe began to cool, as it does from time to time. Some 45,000 delegates, "activists," business representatives and the usual retinue of journalists registered for the party in Copenhagen. This year, only 1,234 journalists registered for the Cancun beach party. The only story there is that there's no story there. The U.N. organizers glumly concede that Cancun won't amount to anything, even by U.N. standards.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/2/pruden-turn-out-the-ligh…

what is it lately with debates popping up about things that have been settled for a REALLY LONG TIME? Harley- the tobacco industry was forced years ago to show many of their internal documents, which showed that THEIR OWN RESEARCH had told them that smoking carries an extremely increased risk of cancer and other diseases. Although I hate it when people trot out anecdotes as if they are science, I will give one because i find it interesting. I don't state that it proves anything, but I personally feel that it jives with EVERY SINGLE REPUTABLE STUDY EVER DONE and by that I mean ones that weren't funded by the industry.

On my mother's side of the family, EVERYONE smoked, period, except my mother. Now, my grandfather has emphysema and has had a heart attack, one of my uncles had a heart attack at age 45, with no other risk factors- not obese, no family history of coronary disease, in good physical condition-the man is a construction worker! my other uncle who has been smoking since age 9, is now in his early forties, looks sixty, and can barely speak. My uncle who quit when he got married looks his age and has yet to suffer from a serious health problem.

Harley, at your core argument is the fact that you are cherry-picking data, manipulating your standards, taking data out of context, and essentially straight up lying through your teeth. You, sir, are either INCREDIBLY stupid or an enormous liar, and i'm going to guess it's a mixture of both.

Also, harley, editorials are NOT fact, as the latest highly biased washington post link proves.

captainahags, one minor point:

The Washington Times is very very different than the Washington Post.

Yes - the Washington Times is a bit, well "wacky" is a good word for it. Run by the Moonies, they have a tendency to be right of even the right wing.

Is there data to show that all of the diseases "caused" by second-hand smoke are in decline, since tobacco use overall is in decline?

Air quality testing proves shs is 4 to 25,000 times SAFER than OSHA permissible exposure limits (PEL) IE. Not a workplace health hazard:

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2010/10/air-quality-testing-of-seco…

And isn't it very telling that welding smoke is still allowed in the workplace (regulated by OSHA) yet the far, far, less hazardous secondhand smoke is banned?

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2007/04/equal-protection-of-law.html

Must be due to the fact that smoking ban lobbyists received $446+ million from Nicoderm interests at RWJF:

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2007/02/smoking-bans-good-public-po…

Toxic mold kicked off my adult-onset asthma *but* I was sensitive to smoke as a child, my brother and I both got headaches and excused ourselves from any room smokers were polluting. The asthma has made me much more senstive, and I can react to particles that have collected on a smoker's hair and clothing. Certainly, secondhand smoke can trigger an attack and causes at minimum mild discomfort. If I'm already suffering allergies, a faceful of smoke can leave me winded and jelly-legged.
Yet what I really want to do is beg smokers to give it up for their own sakes. I would never have guessed how *painful* it is to struggle to breathe until I got asthma. It tears me up to see young people destroying their lungs as if it meant nothing.

I currently live in a place that had an older couple living in it for quite a while. They appear to have been heavy smokers, especially in the bathroom as, whenever I have a shower, tobacco residue literally starts to ooze out from the wall/paint in grimy dark yellow streaks that I keep wiping away. Absolutely disgusting - I do not want that in my lungs, thank you very much.

Yeah, then you get guys who "quit" like Christopher Hitchens did: wake up one morning and your throat is not working, you're having trouble breathing, and you feel awful. You resolve to see a doctor immediately and, since your throat feels like shit, you decide to stop smoking for a day or two while you figure out what's going on. By the time the oncologist is ready to see you, you've already "quit" smoking. Right.

What a ridiculous comment "100 million people die of smoking related disease's" it could be true but there's absolutley no data to prove it.
My feeling is that there is a known cause for all this cancer, and it's not smoking (oh yes smoking causes cancer)but smoking is just a smokecreen (sorry) for something else.
There is more lung cancer in USA than most countries, and most countries smoke a hell of a lot more, and dont give out the bullshit about not being diagnosed or not living long enough, it's just not true, I live in Philippines where everyone smokes especially the poor,and they seem to live the longest.

stuart:

http://www.malaya.com.ph/11292010/liv1.html

The statistics do not agree with your attentional bias. It seems that the Philippines have a major problem with lung cancer, and lung cancer deaths. Also, you need to understand that "I don't know where the data comes from" is not ever the same as "there's absolutely no data." You seem to have gotten those two things confused.

The anti-smokers are guilty of flagrant scientific fraud for ignoring more than 50 studies, which show that human papillomaviruses cause at least a quarter of non-small cell lung cancers. Smokers and passive smokers are more likely to have been exposed to this virus, for socioeconomic reasons. And the anti-smokers' studies are all based on nothing but lifestyle questionnaires, so they're cynically DESIGNED to blame tobacco for all those extra lung cancers that are really caused by HPV.

http://www.smokershistory.com/hpvlungc.htm
http://www.smokershistory.com/etsheart.html

And those criminals commit the same type of fraud with every disease they blame on tobacco. And another thing: This "study" (which isn't even a study, but manufactured using fraudulent risk claims) was funded by billionaire anti-smoker Michael Bloomberg, to further his political agenda of health fascism. Anyone who can't see through this is a moron, and anyone who pretends not to is a scoundrel.

Still doesn't make the smoke or the smokers smell any better. So do you think that the HPV vaccines will reduce lung cancers?

@152
Nice job there, linking to a site that is blatantly pro-smoking, as well as your conspiracy theory blabbering.

Makes you look more like an idiot, not that you need any more help in that regard.

@158
Nice job there, linking to a site that is blatantly pro-smoking, as well as your conspiracy theory blabbering. The "studies" you link to are so full of bad science that it made me laugh.

Makes you look more like an idiot, not that you need any more help in that regard.

Oh, novalox, don't you know that using lots of colors and many sizes of fonts makes a website more believable? Oh, and it is interesting that even the first link said that HPV DNA was only found in one quarter of the cancerous lungs. Nothing about the other 75%.

novalox - And what about your bogus anti-smoker conspiracy theory, which thanks to their political connections was used by the Department of Justice to try to loot more money from smokers? It was nothing but a mish-mash of PR proposals. The DOJ failed to identify a single act of scientific fraud, or of concealment of supposed smoking dangers. In fact, its whole premise was an insult to our intelligence, because if the information had been concealed, no PR campaign would have been necessary.

Chris - YOUR side thinks that lifestyle questionnaires that ignore the role of infection are "believable." Your side uses premises frozen in time that date from the Third Reich, which you conspired to jam down the public's throat by repeating these lies over and over again, just like the Nazi's propaganda campaigns. And it's a lie that I didn't say anything about the other 75%. "We can expect the incidence of HPV in lung cancer to increase, because not all studies looked for all the types of HPV implicated, and because of improvements in methodology. The issue which most urgently needs to be addressed is that studies which are based on nothing but lifestyle questionnaires exploit different rates of HPV exposure between smokers, passive smokers, and non-passive smoke-exposed non-smokers to falsely blame smoking and passive smoking for lung cancer that is actually caused by HPV."

That 25% of NSCLC is over ten times larger than your highly propagandized claims about secondhand smoke, and is fully adequate to account for ALL of the purported deaths from ETS. And further evidence could show that HPV caused all or most of the remaining 75% as well, due to loss of the HPV genome after carcinogenesis has occurred.

So, Carol, you are not denying that smokers stink? Have you noticed that people keep their distance from you even when you are not purposely inhaling burned byproducts? That is because even when you are inside and not allowed to engage in that behavior you still have an aura of stale smoke stench.

You could get back a sense of smell if you quit smoking (something my father found out after he quit when he was found to have mouth cancer). You might even recover some brain cells and realize you have been a pawn to Big Tobacco for many years. Throwing money at them while becoming a social outcast as you get more and more addicted.

Oh Carol, you crack me up.

Carol - "THESE WEBSITES PROVE THAT THERES A CONSPIRACY BETWEEN THE MEDICAL FACISTS AND THE DOJ TO PREVENt SMOKERS FROM ENJOING THEIR DELICIOUS PESTICIDE!"

Chris, et all. - "So there's a conspiracy which YOU know the truth about, and anything constituting a literal mountain of scientific and retrospective evidence, including studies done AND suppressed by the tobacco industry from the 1960s until congressional hearings forced them to light are fraudulently done and with poor methodology, and every organization out there is somehow IN on this conspiracy?"

Carol, I know this is anecdote, but have you ever sat in on a cadaver lab, dissection, or autopsy involving a heavy smoker - expecially someone who died of COPD? I'll give you a tip here - it's not HPV that turns their lungs black.

Carol, you just pulled a Godwin. Oh, so that silly color ridden conspiracy theory website is your work? I am not surprised.

Really, lady, do yourself a favor and quit smoking. It will save you money, and you may actually revive some brain cells.

René Najera - your beloved 'Henle-Koch's postulates' have been obsolete for decades, and REAL epidemiologists (as opposed to anti-smoker quacks) don't rely on them.

"How can we test hypotheses on the etiologic relation of particular viruses to particular tumors? There is no simple answer to this, but perhaps an important part of the answer is a negative statement: we do not test such hypotheses by being bound to Koch's postulates. Scientific proof of an hypothesis consists of elimination of all conceivable and reasonable alternative explanations, not in filling in the blanks in a prescribed set of rules. Koch's postulates are a precise formulation of experimental requirements for eliminating alternative hypotheses in the testing of one particular pathogenetic model, that is, that an infectious agent produces disease reaction during its period of active multiplication. When pathogenesis involves delayed onset of symptomatology, Koch's model just does not apply. Instead, we must formulate or predict the host-parasite relationship we think may obtain, examine this model for what inferences can be made, and then devise means of testing for the expected outcome of those inferences which are unique for that model." (A Survey of the Tumor Virus Problem from an Epidemiologic Standpoint. Wallace P. Rowe, Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, USPHS, Bethesda, Md. Cancer Research 1965 Sep;25(8):1277-1282.) Note that the anti-smokers believe that the way to 'eliminate all conceivable and reasonable alternative explanations' to their blame of smoking, is by suppressing and destroying research, censoring the media, spreading smears and lies, and prosecuting the tobacco industry for the slightest appearance of questioning it.

Chris - True to type, you fall back on personal abuse based on subjective opinion as your justification for scientific fraud. In fact, your pretense that smoking stinks is the product of more than six decades of systematic propaganda by the anti-smokers. You're the one who's been brainwashed. Just repeal the smoking bans, and watch people flock to bars that allow smoking. That's why you're afraid to repeal those bans - you don't want to see peoples' free choices.

Lawrence - I challenge you to cite one piece of supposed "tobacco-funded research that was hidden for years that actually showed that smoking was hazardous to your health & uncovered as part of the multi-decade tobacco litigation - which resulted in the multi-billion dollar settlement to the government and the states." And the truth is that the tobacco industry settled despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that they were winning, that is, the jury would have acquitted them. And they settled for more money than the anti-smokers were demanding! That proves that they were controlled by the anti-smokers, and threw the fight on purpose.

Chance Gearheart - Your "literal mountain of scientific and retrospective evidence" is all garbage, because it's based of lifestyle questionnaires that ignore the role of infection, in order to falsely blame tobacco. That's why your beloved Surgeon General et al. refuse to address the issue.

Show us any of those "studies done AND suppressed by the tobacco industry from the 1960s until congressional hearings forced them to light." Not just a mish-mash of PR proposals.

And the reason that every oganization is in on this conspiracy is because the American Cancer Society has been the only game in town from the very beginning. Their stooges staffed the National Cancer Institute from the time it was created in 1937, and government research grants have been the most important source of funding ever since.

As for the black stuff in the lungs of people with COPD: Chemical and electron microscopic studies of the black pigment of the human lung. Joyce K. Newman, A. E. Vatter, and O. K. Reiss. Webb-Waring Institute and the Departments of Biochemistry and Pathology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Denver. Archives of Environmental Health 1967 Oct;15:420-429. "The black pigment of the human lung has been examined chemically and with the electron microscope. A method has been developed for the isolation of this pigment by means of dissection followed by enzymatic digestion. It is a mixture of inorganic materials (silicates, aluminates, and other trace metals), some elemental carbon, and a highly insoluble pigment, probably organic in nature. Because of the extreme insolubility of the pigment, it has not been possible to characterize it further chemically. Electron microscopic evidence suggests the lung pigments are associated with the lysosomal particles of the cell. Comparison of the composition of lung pigment with the medical history of the individual has failed to reveal any correlation in the group studied. When the case histories of the patients, their smoking histories, and their occupations were compared with the patterns of lung pigments observed in the electron microscope, no correlation was found between them. Other support: U. S. Public Health Service."

Chance Gearheart- Mary Woodard Lasker was the head of the American Cancer Society who started the open war on smokers. She was the most powerful health lobbyist in history. "For the past twenty years, Mrs. Lasker has been, in the words of one federal health official, 'the most important single factor in the rise of support for biomedical research.' In the process, she has helped the NIH budget to explode from $2.5 million in 1945 to $1.4 billion this year, influenced Presidents, immobilized Secretaries of Health, Education, and Welfare, selected health policy makers, and pushed health policy in controversial directions... Mrs. Lasker's network is probably unparalleled in the influence that a small group of private citizens has had over such a major area of national policy. One federal official refers to it as a 'noble conspiracy.' Gorman calls it a 'high class kind of subversion, very high class. We're not second story burglars. We go right in the front door.'" (The Health Syndicate / Washington's Noble Conspiracy. By Elizabeth Brenner Drew. The Atlantic Monthly 1967, Vol. 200, pp. 75-82) And, Mary Woodard Lasker's stepson was on the board of directors of Philip Morris for 20 years!

http://tobaccodocuments.org/atc/12917276.html

Public Interest, Thursday, Sep. 27, 2001 interview with Judith Robinson, author of "Noble Conspirator," on Mary's crony Florence S. Mahoney and the rise of the National Institutes of Health (The Francis Press, 2001).

http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2001-09-27/judith-robinson-noble-con…

The only "toll" from secondhand smoke is that unnecessary smoking bans have closed 10,000+ hospitality establishments around the globe, reduced charitable gaming revenue to needy individuals and causes, and eliminated hundreds of thousands of jobs..........destroying economies all along the way.

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2009/03/worldwide-economic-meltdown…

Meanwhile AQ testing proves everyone of these bans was totally unjustifiable:

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2010/10/air-quality-testing-of-seco…

Multiple AQ test results from around the globe confirms secondhand smoke is NOT a health hazard:

This University of Washington study tested 20 Missouri smoking establishments and found that secondhand smoke levels ranged from 110 to 877 times SAFER than OSHA workplace air quality standards require.
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2010/09/new-st-louis-aq-study-publi…

This Johns Hopkins University study tested Baltimore smoking establishments and found that secondhand smoke levels ranged from 30 to 238 times SAFER than OSHA workplace air quality standards require.
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2007/11/johns-hopkins-air-quality-t…

This British Medical Journal published study tested European smoking establishments and found that secondhand smoke levels ranged from 4 to 5,000 times SAFER than OSHA workplace air quality standards require.
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2007/04/bmj-published-air-quality-t…

This American Cancer Society sponsored study tested Western New York smoking establishments and found that secondhand smoke levels ranged from 532 to 25,000 times SAFER than OSHA workplace air quality standards require.
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2004/04/american-cancer-society-tes…

This St. Louis Park, MN. Environmental Health Dept study tested 19 Minnesota smoking establishments and found that secondhand smoke levels ranged from 15 to 500 times SAFER than OSHA workplace air quality standards require.
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2006/02/air-quality-testing-and-sec…

WHO report on secondhand smoke
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2008/03/british-medical-journal-who…

Carol:

I have no interest in your conspiracy theories or that undifferentiated spew of studies that you have presented.

I agree, there is a subset of lung cancers that occur in non-smokers. These are more common in women, and are usually adenocarcinomas. There is evidence that viruses may be involved (as well as other things, including second hand smoke). However this accounts for only 20% of all lung cancers in women, and less than 10% in men.

I am interested in your explanation as to why cigarette smokers have a 10 to 20 times increase in lung cancer incidence over non-smokers.

Carol (#158) claims:

"The anti-smokers are guilty of flagrant scientific fraud for ignoring more than 50 studies, which show that human papillomaviruses cause at least a quarter of non-small cell lung cancers. Smokers and passive smokers are more likely to have been exposed to this virus, for socioeconomic reasons. And the anti-smokers' studies are all based on nothing but lifestyle questionnaires, so they're cynically DESIGNED to blame tobacco for all those extra lung cancers that are really caused by HPV."

While HPV (and EBV, for that matter) have been associated with lung cancer in Asia, there is still a great deal of controversy over the validity of these findings and - even if true - their clinical relevance. While pappilomaviruses and polyomaviruses (and a large number of other viruses) inactivate p53 in order to prevent cell apoptosis (a common response to viral infection), carcinogenic transformation isn't that common.

Ms. Thompson's claim that "Smokers and passive smokers are more likely to have been exposed to this virus, for socioeconomic reasons." strains credulity. HPV is not restricted to any socioeconomic class. For that matter, smokers of all socioeconomic classes get lung cancer.

Ms. Thompson's characterisation of the studies linking smoking and lung cancer as "lifestyle questionnaires" is equally risable. Of course, researchers have to rely on the subjects' recall of their smoking history, but it seems likely that someone would have a clearer memory of whether or not they ever smoked (and when they started and how much they smoked) than they would of how many meals of fish they ate a month or how often they excercised. To claim otherwise is either naive or dishonest.

As for the clinical relevance of the findings of HPV DNA in lung cancer, a few of the studies that Ms. Thompson didn't mention may put it in perspective:

Lim WT, et al. Assessment of human papillomavirus and Epstein-Barr virus in lung adenocarcinoma. Oncol. Rep. 2009 Apr;21(4):971-5.

"The association of human papillomavirus (HPV) and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection with non-small cell lung cancer is controversial. HPV and EBV prevalence in a uniform population of lung adenocarcinoma was investigated, hypothesizing that there would be differences seen between smokers and non-smokers and between sexes. Patients involved in this study were selected from a single institution database of lung cancer. In total 497 patients with adenocarcinoma were identified and 110 patients had sufficient tissue for analysis with an in situ hybridization method that probed for high-risk and low-risk HPV and EBV. There were 65 males and 45 females, 78 patients with stage I-IIIA disease and 32 patients with stage IIIB-IV disease. There were similar number of smokers and non-smokers. Across all stages HPV and EBV staining was absent from all tissues examined. It is unlikely that HPV or EBV is an important etiological agent in adenocarcinoma of the lung, even among the never-smokers." [emphasis added]

Ikakawa R, et al. Prevalence of human papillomavirus 16/18/33 infection and p53 mutation in lung adenocarcinoma. Cancer Sci. 2010 Aug;101(8):1891-6. Epub 2010 May 19.

"Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is a causative event for the development of uterine cervical carcinoma. Human papillomavirus (HPV) 16, 18, and 33 DNA has been also detected frequently in lung adenocarcinomas (AdCs) in East Asian countries; however, its prevalence in Japan remains unclear. We therefore screened for HPV 16/18/33 DNA in 297 lung AdCs in a Japanese population by multiplex PCR with type-specific primers. As reported previously, HPV 16 DNA was detected in two cervical cancer cell lines, CaSki and SiHa, while HPV 18 DNA was detected in HeLa cells, and 0.1-1.0 copies of HPV-DNA per cell were detectable by this method. However, with this method, none of the 297 lung AdCs showed positive signals for HPV 16/18/33 DNA, indicating that HPV-DNA is not or is very rarely integrated in lung AdC genomes in the Japanese. Furthermore, none of the lung AdCs showed positive signals by nested PCR with HPV 16/18 type-specific primers. Therefore, we further attempted to detect HPV 16/18/33 DNA in 91 lung cancer cell lines, including 40 AdC cell lines. Among them, 30 have been established in Japan and the remaining 61 in the USA. No HPV signals were obtained in any of the 91 cell lines by either multiplex or nested PCR, while the p53 gene was mutated in 81 of them including 35 of the 40 AdC cell lines. These results indicate that HPV 16/18/33 infection does not play a major role in the development of lung AdC in Japan nor in the USA." [emphasis added]

It seems more than a bit premature to scream "Conspiracy!" when the state of the science is so uncertain. Ms. Thompson can hardly claim that there is a conspiracy to suppress the hypothesis that HPV is somehow involved in lung cancer, given the vast number of published papers, nor can she claim that research into the question is being suppressed.

As to the claim that smoking has nothing to do with lung cancer, that hardly seems plausible. Even those researchers looking into HPV and lung cancer acknowledge that smoking contributes to lung cancer - only Ms. Thompson claims that smoking is blameless.

It also needs to be mentioned that lung cancer is not the only - or the most common - health effect of smoking. Emphysema, coronary artery disease and peripheral vascular disease are also documented results of smoking, not to mention oral and stomach cancer. There is no good reason to take up or continue smoking from a health perspective.

If Ms. Thompson is concerned that laws protecting people from second-hand smoke go too far, she may be on firmer ground. Certainly, the evidence supporting health effects of second-hand smoke - except on household members of smokers and people working in smoke-filled environments (e.g. bar workers) - is equivocal. Even so, why should non-smokers be forced to put up with tobacco smoke when they are in public places, even if it is only an irritant?

As a non-smoker, I greatly appreciate not being subjected to the rank smell of tobacco smoke whenever I go to work, ride public transit, fly in an airliner, go to a restaurant or bar, or sit in a public lobby (all of which used to allow smoking in my lifetime). And before Ms. Thompson equates tobacco smoke with strong perfume or cologne, the spread and persistence of tobacco smoke far exceeds any but the most pungent (and liberally applied) scent. Even if it is only an irritant, why should Ms. Thompson have the privilege of filling public spaces with tobacco smoke?

Prometheus

And the truth is that the tobacco industry settled despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that they were winning, that is, the jury would have acquitted them. And they settled for more money than the anti-smokers were demanding! That proves that they were controlled by the anti-smokers, and threw the fight on purpose.

Please tell me that you're joking. Please.

I hate to think that there's someone as deranged as that running around free.

So, Carol, what are the benefits of tobacco smoking? Really? How much a week do you spend on tobacco products? Are you really perfectly healthy? Do you actually walk up the stairs to the second or third floor, or do you take the elevator? Have you never burned a hole in a tablecloth or dropped a burning ash on someone?

I was merely pointing out that health is not the only issue. You seem to be so addicted to inhaling the stuff, that you can't even see that.

You're lying when you claim that the those studies are not on my page.

As for the Iwakawa study, you misspelled the name. And, it states that "HPV 16 DNA was detected in two cervical cancer cell lines," but "none of the 297 lung AdCs showed positive signals for HPV 16/18/33 DNA, indicating that HPV-DNA is not or is very rarely integrated in lung AdC genomes in the Japanese."

The key word here is "integrated." Those tumors could have had episomal infection by HPV, which is in a circular form that is harder to detect, and is not integrated. And, what exactly were they looking for? In advanced cervical cancers, 99.7% of which are known to be caused by HPV, the majority of cells no longer express E7.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20557307

But it's more likely that they're playing the same deceitful game they played with Epstein-Barr virus and nasopharyngeal cancer, of claiming that they couldn't find any. They were eventually overwhelmed by those who could.

And, the anti-smokers commit the same fraud of using defective studies to falsely blame tobacco for diseases that are really caused by infection eith every one of their claims.

Really, Carol, why do you defend your addiction so vehemently? What has it done for you? How much does it cost you?

Hopefully not as much as it did to my university over thirty years ago. The fall after I moved out of the dorm and into an apartment, someone fell asleep in its TV lounge with a cigarette. The couch caught on fire, and the lobby area was gutted. Fortunately the young man escaped, and the building evacuated with only about half a dozen students went the the hospital for smoke inhalation. (since the real damage was just in the TV lobby and from smoke in the rest of the building the dorm allowed the students free use of the laundry facilities... then when it closed in the summer installed a sprinkler system)

So really, what do you get out of it?

Ah, so the smoking conspiracy theory poster returns with even more nutjob websites for me to laugh at, with all of the misguided science, conspiracy theories, and slanted viewpoints...

Fun, fun, fun.....

BTW, who thinks that harleyrider and Carol are the same, or at the very least in league with each other.

Prometheus - There is evidence that p53-inactivating mutations are a late event, occurring after a cancer has already been established and has spread to the bone marrow (p53 gene mutations are not required for early dissemination of cancer cells. S Offner, W Schmaus, K Witter, GB Baretton, G Schlimok, B Passlick, G Riethmuller, K Pantel. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1999 Jun;96(12):6942-6946). The authors compared the p53 status of primary and micrometastatic tumor cells, and found no correlation. Also, they found that "the disseminated carcinoma cells rarely accumulate mutated p53 protein and that 10 cell lines derived thereof did not harbor p53 mutations even in the presence of such mutations in the autologous primary tumors." They believe that "malignant cells may leave the primary carcinoma at an early stage of its development when p53 is not mutated yet." This also indicates that p53 mutations are irrelevant to the etiology of cancer and not the initiating event as the health establishment pretends.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/96/12/6942

There is experimental evidence that polycyclic organic hydrocarbons and physiological conditions such as hypoxia select for cells with mutated p53. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons inhibited growth of normal cells more than those whose p53 has been previously inactivated either by mutations or by HPV E6, the oncogenic protein of human papillomavirus. (Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons enhance terminal cell death of human ectocervical cells. EA Rorke, N Sizemore, H Mukhtar, LH Couch, PC Howard. Int J Oncol 1998 Sep;13(3):557-563)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9683793

And, according to the CDC, the rates of cervical cancer, for which there is the most demographic and causal evidence, are higher in poorer counties.

http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/statistics/poverty.htm

Chris- For the government to commit fraud to deprive us of our liberties is automatically a violation of our Constitutional rights to the equal protection of the laws, just as much as if the government purposely threw innocent people in prison. And for the government to spread lies about phony smoking dangers is terrorism, no different from calling in phony bomb threats.

We have an inherent right not to be subjected to your frauds, and you have no right to demand that other people justfy their choices to YOU, in order to not be subjected to your vile and obnoxious tyranny - vile and obnoxious because you corrupt science in order to impose the pseudo-science of the Third Reich on us all. You want to pretend that the scientific advances of the last 30 years do not exist, because they don't suit your pre-ordained anti-tobacco dogmas! And this is the same as imposing an anti-scientific cult religious belief on everyone, also in violation of our Constitutional rights to freedom of religion.

You did not answer the question. Other than lightening your wallet, what does your freedom to buy the stuff and inhale it into your lungs, what do you get out of it?

I know you are addicted, and a slave to that addiction... so why do you not put your effort into breaking that addiction instead of conspiracy mongering?

Let me rephrase that: how does smoking personally benefit you?

And is that benefit so great that you would lose too much if you quit? I am not trying to get you to justify your addiction, I am curious as to why you cling so vehemently to it.

Also, would you scream at your grandchildren that they are Nazis if they asked to to quit smoking? Has any family member expressed concern over your addiction?

Prometheus - the issue is that you anti-smokers deliberately commit scientific fraud in order to falsely blame tobacco for diseases that are really caused by infection. Your lie that I claimed "that smoking has nothing to do with lung cancer" is a fraudulent misrepresentation of my position, which is in kind with your lack of scientific ethics.

And your specious attempt to deny this: "Ms. Thompson can hardly claim that there is a conspiracy to suppress the hypothesis that HPV is somehow involved in lung cancer, given the vast number of published papers, nor can she claim that research into the question is being suppressed," is another fraudulent misrepresentation. The Surgeon General report and all your other anti-smoker screeds are guilty of flagrant fraud for ignoring those 50-plus studies of HPV and lung cancer, not to mention the evidence implicating infection in the multitude of other diseases they falsely blame on smoking.

Furthermore, their unanimity is not surprising, considering that they've all been written by a corrupt little clique ring-led by Jonathan M. Samet. He has been an anti-smoking activist since the Fifth World Conference on Smoking and Health in 1983. He was one of three "consulting scientific editors" and "prepared draft chapters or portions" of the 1986 Surgeon General Report, "The Health Consequences of Involuntary Smoking," and was also involved in the 1984, 1985, 1989, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2001 and 2004 SG Reports, and was Senior Scientific Editor of the 2006 Surgeon General Report, "The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke." He was also a member of the Science Advisory Board of the so-called "EPA" Report on ETS, the key chapters of which were actually secretly written by an anti-smoking activist crony of Samet's, using illegal pass-through contracts to conceal his role. Samet was Chairman of the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) committee which produced the fraudulent Monograph on Smoking and Involuntary Smoking in 2003. In 2005, Samet and three anti-smoking activist cronies formed a majority of the voting board of the ASHRAE Position Document on ETS. In addition, he committed perjury in 1998 in the State of Minnesota lawsuit against the cigarette companies, and testified in the US Department of Justice lawsuit against them as well. He was a contributing author and editor of the 2010 Surgeon General's Report, How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease: The Biology and Behavioral Basis for Smoking-Attributable Disease, and three of his adminstrative underlings (Roberta B. Gray, Nancy Leonard, and Deborah Williams) were also involved in the report. And, Samet is now chairman of the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug Administration as well.

So. these are all the product of a corrupt little politically-connected clique, who systematically exclude the real scientists from their echo chamber, while the mass media keep the public ignorant and cover up their crimes.

Chris - "What a stupid, moronic, transparently manipulative and sleazy comment: "Also, would you scream at your grandchildren that they are Nazis if they asked to to quit smoking? Has any family member expressed concern over your addiction?"

As an intelligent, informed adult, I don't let ignorant little babes tell me how to run my life. And, I would find out what piece of subhuman garbage has been trying to fill their heads with lies, arm myself suitably for committing major acts of violence, and confront them for what they did!!!!!!!

My goodness. It appears I've attracted a live one in Carol. I haven't seen so much nonsense in such a short period of time since Dennis Markuze! I hardly know where to start, or whether to bother, given that no doubt Carol will simply do a bit more of the ol' Gish gallop! (Google it if you don't know what it is.)

Orac - There's no essential difference between anti-smoker pseudo-science and "creation science." Both concoct a cherry-picked case to confirm their pre-drawn conclusions, while ignoring contrary evidence. And the anti-smokers fraudulently pretend that they've settled the issue for once and for all, with no obligation to consider new evidence, which is in the nature of theology and directly contrary to real science. So watch who you're accusing of Gishing.

Ha.

Ha ha.

Ha ha ha.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Oh, me. Carol. Be careful. You might just cause me to die laughing!

Orac - In fact, the primary distinction between anti-smoker pseudo-science and "creation science" is that the former is favored by the wealthy and privileged ruling oligarchy, e.g. the Harvard School of Public Health, while the latter is favored by the lower socioeconomic classes.

@Carol

Your lie that I claimed "that smoking has nothing to do with lung cancer" is a fraudulent misrepresentation of my position

Wait. So you do agree that smoking is connected to lung cancer?

I second Chris' question: what do you get from smoking? How does it benefit you? Inquiring minds want to know. (For what it's worth, I think that if you want to smoke, go ahead. Just respect my right to breath clean, stench-free air as I respect your right to inhale noxious fumes.)

I second Chris' question: what do you get from smoking?

Paranoid schizophrenia?

Carol:

As an intelligent, informed adult, I don't let ignorant little babes tell me how to run my life. And, I would find out what piece of subhuman garbage has been trying to fill their heads with lies, arm myself suitably for committing major acts of violence, and confront them for what they did!!!!!!!

That is a terribly sad thing to read. There must be some horrible family dynamics to create such vitriol. I am so sorry that you live such an unhappy life to reject those who would show their concern for your well being.

Todd W. - the issue is that you anti-smokers deliberately commit scientific fraud in order to falsely blame tobacco for diseases that are really caused by infection. The lie that I claimed "that smoking has nothing to do with lung cancer" is a fraudulent misrepresentation of my position, which is in kind with anti-smokers' lack of scientific ethics. And YOUR pretense that I agree with Chris is another fraudulent misrepresentation of my position, likewise designed to try to evade my point. AND NOTHING WILL BE SETTLED UNTIL THIS SCIENTIFIC FRAUD IS ENDED.

Chris - Spreading lies and defamations are acts of war which deserve to be answered with acts of war. So stick your slimy little mind-games where the sun don't shine. They just go to prove that anti-smokers are subhuman garbage.

Wow.

Just, wow.

I guess I can't see Ms. Thompson's point - even if HPV causes 25% of lung cancers, how exactly does that absolve smoking of the other 75%? Is she claiming that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer?

And one other point that Ms. Thompson is missing:

"The key word here is "integrated." Those tumors could have had episomal infection by HPV, which is in a circular form that is harder to detect, and is not integrated."

The reason that Iwakawa (my bad for mis-spelling the name) et al specifically mention integrated virus is that the un-integrated virus doesn't cause cancer. Un-integrated virus doesn't replicate as an episome, it replicates as a virus, creating virus particles and lysing the cell. The lysed cells don't become cancer because they are dead.

Finally, both the FISH technique used by Lim et al and the PCR technique used by Iwakawa et al would have detected HPV DNA in episomal form.

I don't dispute the possibility that HPV may cause some cases of lung cancer and may even be a major cause of lung cancer in some populations, but that doesn't mean that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer or that it isn't a major risk factor for lung cancer.

I'd also be interested to hear Ms. Thompson's explanation for the decline in lung cancer incidence. Is it due to the HPV vaccine? (Hint: the decline is happening in people who didn't receive the vaccine)

Prometheus

Carol,
I find your comment

to not be subjected to your vile and obnoxious tyranny

quite interesting since it is you who wishes to subject the rest of us to your vile and obnoxious habit.

Like Prometheus, I am old enough to remember when smoking was allowed everywhere, even on airplanes. And you know what? I don't care what the science says--I still will always support bans on smoking in public places.

The bottom line is that unless you're a smoker, smoking is gross.

No amount of conspiracy theories or whining about your rights being trampled can change that.

Oh, and if Carol or harleyrider or any other smokers want evidence for my assertion that smoking is gross--try quitting. If you do, you'll find it.

It seems Ms. Thompson is using tobacco to deal with her own mental health issues. It is obvious she is addicted to nicotine and requires a daily fix, or her symptoms increase.

Chemmomo and Prometheus, I am also old enough when smoking was allowed almost everywhere. Though I remember that at least in the 1970s it was banned in movie theaters, not for health reasons but for fire safety reasons. Unfortunately that was often ignored, and I usually endured the fools smoking in the theater. Then several of us from the college dorm went to see the animated "Lord of the Rings" in the late 1970s. Someone in the row in front of us lit up, and our entire row said "Put it out!". That was the last time I had to endure that.

@194, 195

How utterly predictable, instead of backing up her positions with actual facts, carol goes to the ad hominem route.

Prometheus - That is another fraudulent misrepresentation of the issue to pretend that it is necessary to prove that HPV causes 100% of lung cancers, in order to object to the anti-smokers deliberately committing scientific fraud by ignoring more than 50 studies, which implicate HPV in at least a quarter of NSCLCs. This isn't the last word on the percentage, either, because the various studies to date didn't all use the latest techniques or look for all the necessary types of HPV.

This fraud doesn't just inflate the number of deaths blamed on smoking. It is also entirely probable that different rates of HPV infection between non-smokers exposed and not exposed to secondhand smoke entirely account for your claims that secondhand smoke causes lung cancer in non-smokers. You are guilty of scientific fraud for refusing to consider this reasonable alternative explanation, solely because it contradicts your pre-drawn conclusions and hinders your social engineering agenda. Remember, secondhand smoke is what this discussion is supposedly about. So quit trying to change the subject.

As I said, the most likely explanation of those negative studies you cherry-picked is that they're playing the same games of denial that they played with Epstein-Barr virus and nasopharyngeal carcinoma. However, unintegrated HPV genome maintained as a nuclear plasmid in the infected cervical epitheliumis is fully capable of expressing both the E6 and E7 proteins. It doesn't need to replicate.

Chemmomo, if most people thought that tobacco smoke was vile and obnoxious, it would not have been necessary fo you to ban smoking. Furthermore, you anti-smokers would have been able to keep your smoke-free establishments in business, without outlawing competition from those who allow smoking. Your own actions prove that you are a liar.

Carol, we live in a democracy. Your conspiracy theories notwithstanding, the laws were passed by the majority of people who consider tobacco smoke vile and obnoxious. A single smoker can offend hundreds of people.
The fact that ânonsmokingâ sections of restaurants and airplanes existed before the bans (although essentially ineffective) attest to this fact.
And Carol, please specify how my finding tobacco smoke offensive makes me a âliar.â

Ohio's statewide smoking ban passed with 58 percent of the votes. I must say, all the smokers standing outside provide great cover for the 'smokers', nudge, nudge, wink, wink...

I'm sure you're an avid supporter for the right to smoke all types of materials wherever one wants, right, Carol? I'd sure hate to have to categorize you as one of the subhuman garbage.

@Carol

The lie that I claimed "that smoking has nothing to do with lung cancer" is a fraudulent misrepresentation of my position, which is in kind with anti-smokers' lack of scientific ethics. And YOUR pretense that I agree with Chris is another fraudulent misrepresentation of my position, likewise designed to try to evade my point.

Okay, I'm confused. So, if we say that you claim that smoking has nothing to do with lung cancer, we're being fraudulent. Yet, if we say that you claim that smoking does have something to do with lung cancer, we're still fraudulent? Which is it, then? Do you say that smoking is not related or that it is related to lung cancer? Please do try to be clear.

Also, you didn't answer the question: what benefit do you derive from smoking? I'm really quite curious.

Carol:

Chemmomo, if most people thought that tobacco smoke was vile and obnoxious, it would not have been necessary fo you to ban smoking.

That is because you are addicted. Yes, private properties can be smoke free if they want. I just don't want smoke on public buses, their shelters and other public enclosed spaces. Before most restaurants became smoke free, we were at a small neighborhood restaurant that was smoke free. An addicted smoker was incensed that he could not smoke in there and did not like it when the waiter told him that no one ever wanted to sit in their former smoking section so it was a business decision.

Carol:

This fraud doesn't just inflate the number of deaths blamed on smoking.

Investigators say ashes from cigarettes or pot may have sparked fatal Redmond fire:

Authorities say they are investigating whether a fire that swept through a Redmond apartment building early Saturday, killing a 32-year-old man and four young boys, was caused by ashes left smoldering in the bathroom.

Chemmomo - This is not a "democracy," any more than Communist Russia was a democracy. It doesn't represent the people, it represents the will of theocratic oligarchy, who control the politicians and the mass media, and and trying to impose a compulsory state religion, which is based on scientific fraud, on everyone else. The laws were NOT passed by a majority of the people, they were passed by crooked politicians, at the instigation of lying media. They made sure that the people only heard the anti-smokers' point of view, versus the anti-smoker-approved misrepresentation of our point of view, namely that Big Lie of falsely framing the issue as "freedom versus public health" instead of "anti-smoker scientific fraud." They prevented anyone from exposing the anti-smokers' frauds and acts of political corruption, such as the "EPA" report on ETS. The fact that those 50-plus studies have never been mentioned by the mass media, in stark contrast to the propaganda blitzkrieg that began with the very first quack study blaming secondhand smoke for causing lung cancer in non-smokers, is proof of their conspiracy.

And quit pretending that you're entitled to violate any of rights that you please, just by whining that you don't like the smell, and falsely pretending to speak on behalf of everyone in the country. These are our INALIENABLE rights that yuou are violating, our rights to the equal protection of the laws and to freedom of religion, that you are violating. And we have NO OBLIGATION WHATSOEVER to submit peacefully to it, because the government was instituted specifically to protect those rights, and if it fails to do so, it has the consent of the governed no longer, and no right to demand our allegiance.

ildi, your referendums are as fraudulent as Communist elections, for the reasons cited above. Remember those 50-plus studies of HPV and lung cancer that your mass media accomplices keep the public ignorant about, while lying that the issue is "freedom versus public health."

Ah yes, the inalienable rights: life, liberty, and being an asshole smoker who rages on blogs and spews incoherence and toxic smoke with every breath. Voltaire would be proud.

Extra credit for threatening violent revolt over your ability to consume cancer sticks in public places.

Todd W, you're living proof that anti-smokers are psychopathic criminals who ought to be rounded up and put in prison. How many times do I have to repeat it? Your ilk are guily of flagrant scientific fraud for deliberately using defective studies in order to falsely blame tobacco for diseases that are really caused by infection.
Your ilk are guily of flagrant scientific fraud for deliberately using defective studies in order to falsely blame tobacco for diseases that are really caused by infection. Your ilk are guily of flagrant scientific fraud for deliberately using defective studies in order to falsely blame tobacco for diseases that are really caused by infection. Ignoring those 50-plus studies of HPV and lung cancer is the most glaring proof.

@Carol

Still waiting on your answer to two questions:

1) Is smoking related to lung cancer or is it not related to lung cancer, in your opinion? (A brief "yes it is related" or "no it isn't related" will do.)

2) What benefits do you derive from smoking?

Thanks, in advance.

Wow. Ask a couple simple questions and get labeled as a psychopathic criminal. You're quite amusing, Carol.

I'd almost call Poe, but you're right Todd -- Carol's much too amusing.

Carol -- just a quick question. So HPV may cause some specific forms of lung cancer. That doesn't surprise me; HPV is known to cause cancer in other parts of the body, after all. (Hence its name.) The question is: how does this absolve cigarettes, given that there is more than one kind of lung cancer?

Corollary question: if HPV-triggered lung cancer absolved cigarettes in your mind, what is your opinion on lung cancer due to radon gas exposure?

Scottynuke:

I'd almost call Poe, but you're right Todd -- Carol's much too amusing.

Though at this point I get uncomfortable deriving amusement from someone who is obviously mentally ill.

Chris: While Carol's aversion to reality is certainly obvious, we'll never know if it's an act or not.

"If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane," as Mr. Buffett once sang.

I've seen suggestions (though not recently, so they may not have panned out) that some percentage of cigarette smokers are in fact self-medicating for schizophrenia. The other meds for that still aren't great (either), and at least some of those people started smoking decades ago.

That said, just as nicotine patches are less harmful than smoking, I suspect that it should be possible to figure out which bits of tobacco are having the useful effect, and provide them in some other way. I have a partner who smoked for a long time, quit for a decade, then smoked for most of another. He's been off tobacco again for about a year and a half, a chunk of that using nicotine patches and such. Nicotine isn't exactly the bodies friend, but the patches did less damage than the cigarettes, as well as not smelling bad. A nicotine patch doesn't risk causing fires, and it doesn't damage the user's sense of smell.

Carol @208

These are our INALIENABLE rights that yuou are violating, our rights to the equal protection of the laws and to freedom of religion

So smoking is a religion? That explains a lot.

I've seen suggestions (though not recently, so they may not have panned out) that some percentage of cigarette smokers are in fact self-medicating for schizophrenia.

... and many self-medicate with weed to manage the side-effects of the antipsychotics. I totally advocate for Carol's inalienable right to get stoned! Maybe she would be less scary...

Most people I know who voted for the smoking ban did so because it fricking STINKS, Carol, and they wanted to be able to go to a bar or restaurant without having their clothes and hair reek afterward. They also voted for the ban because people who work in a bar should have the right to do so without being exposed to the stink and negative health effects of smoking - not illusory, as much as you wish to think so. I can shoot pool and have a drink without risk of triggering an asthma attack.

I also had smoking friends who felt almost as strongly as you regarding their god-given right to stink up any place they were to satisfy their cravings. The reason bans have to be voted in place is because courtesy seems to take a back seat to addiction.

One of my coworkers has been hospitalized several times the past couple of winters for bronchitics/pneumonia, the last time because her left lung collapsed. She now sneaks a block away and hides in a doorway to smoke.

Carol - turning it up to 11 - claims:

"These are our INALIENABLE rights that yuou [sic] are violating, our rights to the equal protection of the laws and to freedom of religion, that you are violating."

Not being a Constitutional scholar, I went to the US Constitution and the ammendments commonly referred to as the Bill of Rights. I failed to find a guaranteed right to smoke tobacco (or other herbs). Perhaps Ms. Thompson could point me to the section she is referring to.

Equal protection under the law also seems a bit of a stretch, since the laws about smoking in public places, airliners, etc. apply equally to all. Granted, smokers will have their lifestyles affected the most by them, but even I - a life-long non-smoker - cannot light up in a public place, were I to choose to take up the habit.

Freedom of religion? For starters, the "establishment clause" and "free exercise clause" (as in "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...") do not give people free reign to do whatever they like so long as they claim it is a religious practice. Laws against marijuana smoking, bigamy and human sacrifice have withstood "free exercise of religion" challenges. (OK, I was kidding about that last one)

I believe that certain Native American tribes have obtained a religious exception to federal drug laws to allow the use of peyote in their religious practices, but I doubt that tobacco smokers would be able to do the same. On the other hand, who knows what the courts might decide?

Then Carol goes full-canvas-jacket (#211):

"...anti-smokers are psychopathic criminals who ought to be rounded up and put in prison."

I think that Ms. Thompson is showing us that she's not ready for an adult debate on the merits of her argument.

Prometheus

Promotheus - Once again: The issue is ANTI-SMOKER SCIENTIFIC FRAUD. And when your ilk use the government to commit scientific fraud to deprive us of our liberty, that automatically violates our rights to the equal protection of the laws, just as much as throwing innocent people in prison. You think that you can violate other peoples' freedom just because it's more pleasant or convenient for YOU, so you're criminals.

And when you pretend that you've supposedly settled the health issue for once and for all, and that you have no obligation to look at any scientific evidence other than what furthers your agenda, then your garbage is theology, not science, and you are violating our rights to freedom of religion by ramming it down our throats.

So take your little pettifogging crap of pretending that if something isn't listed in the Constitution as protected, that's means it's fair game for you to persecution. The freedom to smoke is just as much Constitutionally-protected as anything else, meaning that you have no right to take it away without a valid reason. And you have valid reason, so your charlatans committed fraud.

The last line is supposed to say, "And you have NO valid reason, so your charlatans committed fraud."

@Carol

Since you still haven't answered, here it is again...

Still waiting on your answer to two questions:

1) Is smoking related to lung cancer or is it not related to lung cancer, in your opinion? (A brief "yes it is related" or "no it isn't related" will do.)

2) What benefits do you derive from smoking?

You think that you can violate other peoples' freedom just because it's more pleasant or convenient for YOU, so you're criminals.

So, you're admitting to being a criminal? After all, you insist on violating other peoples' freedom to breath clean air with your noxious fumes and exhalations just because it's convenient for you...

@Carol

I've got some questions for you:

1) What proof do you have that research into disease caused by or influenced by second hand smoke is fraudulent or only based upon "lifestyle questionares", keeping in mind a cursery search of PubMed's public abstract database has hundreds of articles on the topic ranging from upregulation of Alpha-Nicotinic receptors on Breast Cancer cells, to studies that link the exposure to secondhand smoke with everything from childhood developmental delay, an increased rate of IUGR and birth defects, and increased risk of heart disease and COPD.

2) What purported benefits are there to smoking in terms of health?

3) You frequently equate people who are against public smoking, despite the overwhelming mountain of evidence, as legal facists or Nazis. What legal presidence do you have that public smoking is a protected right of all Americans? (keeping in mind, there is no law against lighting up in private or in designated areas.)

4) Can you provide documented, reliable proof of the conspiracy against smokers you assert?

I am a passive smoke victim. I am due to be reprieved in December when I get to move, and this gives me 4 months of passive smoking with two smokers, one of whom is a chain smoker who smokes all night in the room directly below me. I identify the feeling of poison inside me as a result and correlated that with the feeling at work of methanal poisoning by a careless teacher..
In fact I stated that methanal was in cigarettes before I discovered this fact for myself, purely by a feeling that I had been poisoned by this compound 5 years previously.
I am suffering daily from symptoms of stress and a feeling of being poisoned. I cannot understand how the people around me can stand inhaling this stuff day in day out. Every night I sellotape myself into my room and put a wet shirt under the door to prevent smoke getting in my room.
I know that the smaller organic compounds such as methanal will get through this and so I must keep my windows wide open overnight.. As I write I am feeling the symptoms of being poisoned as I do again and again... there is no dount I will outlive my housemates, mainly by moving away as soon as I am able to, only then the daily symptoms will finally cease. But it is going to be a long 4 months!!