Nobody can dispute the fact that cigarette smoking has taken many lives around the globe. There are many studies who support this fact and even people who smoke would not dare argue against it. The more disputed aspect of smoking today rest on its effects to those people who are called “secondhand smoker”. Here are the top 5 myths about secondhand smoke to educate you about its dangerous effects to human system.
MYTH#1 Exposure to cigarette smoke doesn’t harm anyone.
Reuters reported in 2010 that there is an estimated number of 600,000 deaths due to secondhand or passive smoking. This research was conducted by World Health Organization (WHO).
MYTH#2 The smoke will not harm you because only some of the chemicals in a cigarette are in it.
Well it depends on how you will qualify the word “harm”. Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide and carbon monoxide is a proven poison gas to human body. If you can’t call it “harm” then you might want to think of the chemicals in a smoke that can irritate your respiratory tract which can cause difficulty of breathing. Isn’t the difficulty of breathing a form of harm? There are also 4,000 known toxic in a secondhand smoke. Most of these toxic can cause cancer to a person who is averagely healthy.
Myth#3 There is a minimal effect of secondhand smoke to children since they are not the one directly smoking.
Truth: Second hand smoke is very harmful to children both in their early and latter stage of life. Children who grow up with people who are smoking have greater tendency to smoke in the latter period of their lives. The immediate effects of secondhand smoke to children are the following:
- sudden infant death syndrome or SIDS (especially to mothers who smoke)
- Development of Respiratory diseases – asthma, pneumonia, respiratory infection bronchitis.
- Meningitis
- Hearing loss due to middle ear disease.
Myth#4 Secondhand Smoking cannot cause cancer.
There are many studies which can debunk this myth. There is a higher chance for a person who inhales secondhand smoke to develop a lung cancer (18 to 32 percent higher) than those who don’t suffer from passive smoking. If your partner smokes and you inhale it most of the time, you can have 24% rate of developing cancer.
Myth#5 Secondhand smoke cannot be linked to men’s impotence and infertility
This is a hoax that many tobacco companies would want people to believe. Men who are frequently exposed to secondhand smoke have 200% risk of being impotent than those who inhale clean and fresh quality of air.
On the other hand, according to a British study conducted in 2009, women who are smokers or exposed to heavy secondhand smoke have higher rate of delayed pregnancy.
What to do
The greatest tool against these myths is the power of awareness. You have to educate yourself and others in order to live and enjoy a healthy life. You can also encourage people to stopsmoking today. If they quit smoking now, the world would be a better place to live for the generations to come.
5 Responses
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) could not even produce evidence that passive smoke is significantly harmful inside, this is what they wrote prior to the smoking ban in article 9 OC255/15 9 “The evidential link between individual circumstances of exposure to risk in exempted premises will be hard to establish. In essence, HSE cannot produce epidemiological evidence to link levels of exposure to SHS to the raised risk of contracting specific diseases and it is therefore difficult to prove health-related breaches of the Health and Safety at Work Act”. The reason the ban was brought in under the Health Act 2006, and not by the HSE, because no proof of harm was needed with the Health Act 2006, and the HSE have to have proof, seems the DM has lost rational thought about anything smoke related.
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 quickly 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).
Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence: Third Edition
nap.edu
This sorta says it all
These limits generally are based on assessments of health risk and calculations of concentrations that are associated with what the regulators believe to be negligibly small risks. The calculations are made after first identifying the total dose of a chemical that is safe (poses a negligible risk) and then determining the concentration of that chemical in the medium of concern that should not be exceeded if exposed individuals (typically those at the high end of media contact) are not to incur a dose greater than the safe one.
So OSHA standards are what is the guideline for what is acceptable ”SAFE LEVELS”
OSHA SAFE LEVELS
All this is in a small sealed room 9×20 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.
Why are their any smoking bans at all they have absolutely no validity to the courts or to science!
Nobody can dispute the fact that cigarette smoking has taken many lives around the globe. There are many studies who support this fact and even people who smoke would not dare argue against it.
Doc you got a Toxiology study in your pocket proving END POINT CAUSATION!
I thought not!
Judge doesnt accept statistical studies as proof of LC causation!
It was McTear V Imperial Tobacco. Here is the URL for both my summary and the Judge’s ‘opinion’ (aka ‘decision’):
http://boltonsmokersclub.wordpress.com/the-mctear-case-the-analysis/
(2.14) Prof Sir Richard Doll, Mr Gareth Davies (CEO of ITL). Prof James Friend and
Prof Gerad Hastings gave oral evidence at a meeting of the Health Committee in
2000. This event was brought up during the present action as putative evidence that
ITL had admitted that smoking caused various diseases. Although this section is quite
long and detailed, I think that we can miss it out. Essentially, for various reasons, Doll
said that ITL admitted it, but Davies said that ITL had only agreed that smoking might
cause diseases, but ITL did not know. ITL did not contest the public health messages.
(2.62) ITL then had the chance to tell the Judge about what it did when the suspicion
arose of a connection between lung cancer and smoking. Researchers had attempted
to cause lung cancer in animals from tobacco smoke, without success. It was right,
therefore, for ITL to ‘withhold judgement’ as to whether or not tobacco smoke caused
lung cancer.
[9.10] In any event, the pursuer has failed to prove individual causation.
Epidemiology cannot be used to establish causation in any individual case, and the
use of statistics applicable to the general population to determine the likelihood of
causation in an individual is fallacious. Given that there are possible causes of lung
cancer other than cigarette smoking, and given that lung cancer can occur in a nonsmoker,
it is not possible to determine in any individual case whether but for an
individual’s cigarette smoking he probably would not have contracted lung cancer
(paras.[6.172] to [6.185]).
[9.11] In any event there was no lack of reasonable care on the part of ITL at any
point at which Mr McTear consumed their products, and the pursuer’s negligence
case fails. There is no breach of a duty of care on the part of a manufacturer, if a
consumer of the manufacturer’s product is harmed by the product, but the consumer
knew of the product’s potential for causing harm prior to consumption of it. The
individual is well enough served if he is given such information as a normally
intelligent person would include in his assessment of how he wishes to conduct his
life, thus putting him in the position of making an informed choice (paras.[7.167] to
[7.181]).
Schuman’s Expert Witnesses Testify in Secondhand Smoke Trial
The plaintiff’s expert witnesses spoke up on day three of David Schuman’s case against his housing cooperative, Greenbelt Homes, Inc. (GHI), for its failure to prohibit the nuisance created by his townhome neighbors, the Popovics’, secondhand smoke.
Courtroom and Plaintiff’s Townhome Register Similar Carcinogen Levels
But, an incident from Repace’s testimony Thursday came back into play Friday during cross examination. Goecke pointed out that on Thursday, while demonstrating the carcinogen monitor, Repace had measured the concentration of carcinogens in the court room — which is in a smoke-free building — and the amount he recorded there was similar to what Repace had reported recording in Schuman’s townhome in July of 2011.
greenbelt.patch.com/articles/schumans-expert-witnesses-testify-in-secondhand-smoke-trial
As you can see even in a smokefree courtroom the same so called levels were read in Schumans own Kitchen in his house! The so called scientist was none other than a fellow prohibitionist and JUNK SCIENTIST,Tornado Repace!
Talk about being laughed out of court……………….btw these prohibitionists create whats called ”risk assesment studies” Purely fictional and nothing more than statistical magic to create fear and bigotry against smokers!
Harleyrider1978,
Welcome to the blog discussion. You seem to have a lot of links, and references, that is good.
But what is your conclusion? Smoking is actually good for you? Because all the chemicals you mentioned before are all poisonous.
You seem to confuse quantity with lethality. You have inspired me to write a new post. It is titled: Polonium, Poisoning, and the Plant. Look out for it please. And keep commenting.
Comments are closed.