Spinoff: Second Hand Smoke Risks: Fact or Fiction?

[AustinChief]

I know we have had this debate before but I feel like getting a fresh perspective on this.

I would like to hear people's beliefs on the subject BUT I won't accept a simple "well the CDC says this or Penn and Teller say that"... as support. You have to actually presents FACTS.

I personally don't think a legit study has been done to prove a statistically significant health risk to second hand smoke. That doesn't mean that risks don't exist.. that means that there is no hard science backing up the idea.

HAIL SCIENCE!

Ok, I'll start with my facts backing up this up in the next post....

[AustinChief]

OK, so let's start with a huge study done by the American Cancer Society.. not exactly the most PRO-Tobacco group...
http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7398/1057.full

Conclusions The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed.

Anyone want to tell me why a study with over 100,000 participants done over 39 years found NO significant risks yet they somehow got it wrong?


NOW before someone tries to quote the 1993 EPA study (the most often quoted nonsense) let me point out that it was completely debunked by scientists and even thrown out by a court of law. http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/982407.P.pdf They cherry picked studies for meta-analysis and never showed more then a 1.19 relative risk.

"Relative risks of less than 2 are considered small and are usually difficult to interpret. Such increases may be due to chance, statistical bias, or the effect of confounding factors that are sometimes not evident." - The National Cancer Institute

I can go on and on.. but unless someone wants to challenge me on this, let's all consider the EPA study worthless.

[Pushead2]

secondhand smoke & smoking in general are ****ing gross.

[AustinChief]

Originally Posted by Pushead2

secondhand smoke & smoking in general are ****ing gross.

Ok, you are welcome to your opinion. Now, because you believe that.. does it A) make it a scientific fact that it is a health risk and B) give a valid justification for curtailing a property owner's right to chose a smoking or non-smoking environment for his business?

Clearly no. Just because something is gross doesn't make it harmful nor should it be a legal justification.

Next...

[AustinChief]

Ok, if anyone wants to go out and debunk the CPS-I data in my first post there is a new not yet complete CPS-II study being done by the ACS. Here is what they have to say so far...

Dose-response analyses were restricted to 92,222 women whose husbands provided complete information on cigarette smoking and date of marriage. Lung cancer death rates, adjusted for other factors, were 20 percent higher among women whose husbands ever smoked during the current marriage than among those married to never-smokers (relative risk [RR]=1.2, 95 percent confidence interval [CI]=0.8-1.6). For never-smoking men whose wives smoked, the RR was 1.1 (CI=0.6-1.8). Risk among women was similar or higher when the husband continued to smoke (RR=1.2, CI=0.8-1.8), or smoked 40 or more cigarettes per day (RR=1.9, CI=1.0-3.6), but did not increase with years of marriage to a smoker. Most CIs included the null. Although generally not statistically significant, these results agree with the EPA summary estimate that spousal smoking increases lung cancer risk by about 20 percent in never-smoking women. Even large prospective studies have limited statistical power to measure precisely the risk from ETS.

The important part is bolded. They admit that the study shows NO STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT RISK INCREASE.. yet then flat out ignore that and claim a 20% increase. It's ****ing amazing they get away with this nonsense.

Just to clear it up for you...

"As a general rule of thumb, we are looking for a relative risk of 3 or more before accepting a paper for publication." - Marcia Angell, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine"

"My basic rule is if the relative risk isn't at least 3 or 4, forget it." - Robert Temple, director of drug evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration.

"An association is generally considered weak if the odds ratio [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." - Dr. Kabat, IAQC epidemiologist

[Pushead2]

Originally Posted by AustinChief

Ok, you are welcome to your opinion. Now, because you believe that.. does it A) make it a scientific fact that it is a health risk and B) give a valid justification for curtailing a property owner's right to chose a smoking or non-smoking environment for his business?

Clearly no. Just because something is gross doesn't make it harmful nor should it be a legal justification.

Next...

I hope the business owner would consider it as more of a courtesy.

[AustinChief]

Originally Posted by Pushead2

I hope the business owner would consider it as more of a courtesy.

I'm completely on board with you there. If I owned a bar in a town that allowed smoking, I'd probably designate a smoking area and install a completely separate air filtration system. If done properly (although at a pretty hefty expense) you can almost entirely eliminate even the odor of smoke if you know what you are doing. Or I'd just restrict smoking to an outdoor patio... but those choices should be mine to make.

[Anyong Bluth]

Originally Posted by Pushead2

I hope the business owner would consider it as more of a courtesy.

Unless his business does better off of customer's that smoke versus those that don't - which is almost always the case with establishments like bars.




-- Sent from my Palm Pre using Forums

[Anyong Bluth]

Originally Posted by AustinChief

I'm completely on board with you there. If I owned a bar in a town that allowed smoking, I'd probably designate a smoking area and install a completely separate air filtration system. If done properly (although at a pretty hefty expense) you can almost entirely eliminate even the odor of smoke if you know what you are doing. Or I'd just restrict smoking to an outdoor patio... but those choices should be mine to make.

Exactly,

They have systems to do so, and you could make the law tailored to air quality - in terms of smell and people complaining- that's up to the owner to decide how he wants to and how much he wants to separate the areas or not. You still have a choice to support other bars & if it becomes a problem for the owner losing business / money, you can believe he'll rethink things & improve on it.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre using Forums

[Anyong Bluth]

Originally Posted by AustinChief

I'm completely on board with you there. If I owned a bar in a town that allowed smoking, I'd probably designate a smoking area and install a completely separate air filtration system. If done properly (although at a pretty hefty expense) you can almost entirely eliminate even the odor of smoke if you know what you are doing. Or I'd just restrict smoking to an outdoor patio... but those choices should be mine to make.

Like at Casinos- or at least most of the big ones. People smoke & it rarely ever smells- unless there's that 1 guy that always insists on his cigar.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre using Forums

[crazycoffey]

Originally Posted by Pushead2

secondhand smoke & smoking in general are ****ing gross.

some girls think giving BJs are gross. I'm glad some don't though....

[Fritz88]

Originally Posted by AustinChief

I know we have had this debate before but I feel like getting a fresh perspective on this.

I would like to hear people's beliefs on the subject BUT I won't accept a simple "well the CDC says this or Penn and Teller say that"... as support. You have to actually presents FACTS.

I personally don't think a legit study has been done to prove a statistically significant health risk to second hand smoke. That doesn't mean that risks don't exist.. that means that there is no hard science backing up the idea.

HAIL SCIENCE!

Ok, I'll start with my facts backing up this up in the next post....

It is a murky subject to be honest. Anyone can cherry pick data to support his/her opinion. I know very smart guys whose job is to make sure that good and pro-tobacco data are out there.

There have been a lot of talk about the use of statistical testing. I need to do more reading to make up my mind. Frankly, I was under the impression that second hand smoke was indeed bad for one's health but now I am reconsidering it.

Good stuff AC.

[DBOSHO]

Health risks aside, i dont want to smell your ****ing cigarette smoke.

[Kyle DeLexus]

Originally Posted by DBOSHO

Health risks aside, i dont want to smell your ****ing cigarette smoke.

That has been established and agreed upon, but is not the point of this thread.

[NewChief]

I'd like to find the original paper, but here's something I found. I'm sure you'll "debunk" it though. I, personally, find some of the claims a little over the top and extreme, but I'm still of the opinion that smoking with your kids in the car and windows rolled up isn't a great idea.

http://lancaster.unl.edu/home/Indoor...dhandSmoke.htm

A recent article in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine reviewed all research on children’s health and tobacco smoking from 1980 to 1996. This article concluded that parental smoking is a major health risk for children and results in annual direct medical expenses of $4.6 billion in their children -- 8% of all pediatric medical spending. This includes 5.4 million excess cases of disease and 6,200 excess childhood deaths.

The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine article also showed that as a group, children of smokers who are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke experience:

Higher rates of bronchitis and pneumonia, especially in the first 2 years
Impaired lung function as they get older
Asthma episodes aggravated or triggered by secondhand smoke
Increased likelihood to develop asthma
Increased numbers of acute respiratory illnesses
More ear infections and hearing problems
Longer recovery from colds and other illnesses
More days of school missed due to illnes
Living with secondhand smoke can mean that children suffer from recurrent coughs, wheezing, stuffy noses, headaches, sore throats, eye irritation, ear infections, hoarseness, dizziness, nausea, loss of appetite, lack of energy, and fussiness.

In addition, the same article reviewed medical research that strongly suggests infants of women smokers have an increased risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

A 1997 California EPA study on children’s health reinforced many of the findings in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine article, and uncovered some additional, definitive results as well. The California EPA study found that secondhand smoke exposure to children also causes lung and nasal sinus cancer and heart disease.

Another study links secondhand smoke exposure and children with asthma. U.S. EPA’s 1992 Risk Assessment on secondhand smoke found that exposure:

Caused additional episodes and increased severity of symptoms in children with asthma
Worsened physical conditions in an estimated 400,000 to 1 million children with asthma