Your article on the subject is dated in 2000. Since then many articles and studies from all over the world show breathing in side-stream smoke (the stuff that comes out the end of a cigarette) is truly poisonous to smokers and non-smokers alike. See: Passive smoking - Wikipedia Heart attacks make up the majority of illnesses and deaths, but children and children in the womb are also seriously affected.
Since bans on public smoking have been introduced widely, accumulating evidence shows decreased exposure and decreased illness, especially of the heart. See the 'Effects Upon Health" section of Smoking ban - Wikipedia
I have worked in tobacco control research and policy since 1995.
There are so many columns about smoking. Which one is this in reference to? It’s helpful to post a link, since clicking on “Comment on this answer” doesn’t automatically generate one.
[COLOR=Black]The gist I’m getting from the two articles is “Specifically lung cancer? The studies don’t firmly point to tobacco smoke alone as a culprit.”
But o[/COLOR][COLOR=Black]ne of the first things I’ve noticed when traveling outside of California has been how tobacco odors in restaurants tends to kill my appetite. We can’t go back in time to change our actions, but it would have been easier for the EPA to show how ETS triggers allergies, damages (from smoke & tar) skin & hair, coats everything with tar (thereby diminishing property values), et cetera.
Would such evidence of ETS’s undeniably negative impacts be compelling enough to garner half as much legal prohibition by cities and local governments?
If I am in a room where people have been smoking, even if it has been more than an hour, as long as there are unemptied ashtrays, or it is a room where there has been a lot of smoking over time, I get red, burning skin on my arms and face, and my eyes water and my nose runs. I have never been diagnosed with a tobacco allergy, but I’m pretty sure I have one. I have only once in my life touched fresh tobacco leaves (green leaves) but I got a mild rash on my arm that lasted about an hour. Now, that was only once, and it could have been from something else, but I have my suspicions. I cannot be around cigarette smoke. It literally chokes me up. I’m lucky that the two cities where I have spent most of my time were very aggressive in passing non-smoking ordinances, and that I come from a non-smoking family. I had one aunt who smoked, and she quit in the mid-70s-- and my mother used to make her either stand by an open window or go outside to smoke.
Now that’s just me-- not everyone has overt reactions to smoke or tobacco. But people should be allowed to be annoyed by it, and that should be enough. It should not have to be proved that second-hand smoke is dangerous for people to say “I don’t want it around me,” because it’s annoying even to people who don’t react to it, and no one needs to smoke. It’s not like someone’s Seeing-Eye dog competing with someone else’s dog allergy, or someone’s peanut allergy competing with the fact that for non-allergic people, peanuts are a healthy food.
Actually, the “followup” article (both are from 2000) talks about cardiovascular risks. And both are seriously out of date, seeing that the 2006 Surgeon General’s report concluded on the basis of expanded and quite solid evidence that secondhand smoke not only causes lung cancer, but enhances risk of cardiovascular disease (i.e. heart attack and stroke) - plus there are numerous other conditions linked to secondhand smoke, such as asthma and SIDS.
For years, too few cared about the annoyance of having to cope with smokers’ detritus in public places and such things as diminished enjoyment of dining out and other activities. But once it became clear that significant health risks were also being assumed by non-smokers, lo and behold public smoking bans became commonplace.
If in fact there’s no Cecil update on secondhand smoking risks, it’s high time for one.
I smoke, not heavily, but I do. To me its more of a comorbid factor of my panic disorder/anxiety than anything. It calms me down, fast. Then again I’ve have periods when I can’t smoke for a week or more at a time and have no withdrawal, at least not that I can feel or notice. Even so, it really pisses me off and still would even if I didn’t smoke, that places have these ridiculous rules about being 20 feet from a store and such for smoking. I understand not indoors, I understand the problem with litter and butts, but I don’t understand how they think a plume of smoke from 20 feet away is magically going to give them cancer. Most people breathe in worse than that daily from sitting in traffic.
I don’t care about the cancer. But that plume of smoke makes me cough and is very unpleasant to inhale. If you’re smoking in front of the doors to the store I want to enter, then I have to hold my breath while I walk past you.
As for automobile emissions, I believe we’re working on reducing those too.
Powers &8^]
It’s stuff like this that makes me worry about those first eighteen years of my life as a child of the 70s, with both parents smoking two packs a day and nobody caring if kids breathed it in. At least now, a two-pack-a-day mom or dad is likely smoking outside or far from the kids.
Boy I hope there isn’t a ticking time bomb in my body that was set in motion in 1975.
**Rivka Chaya **provided a perfect illustration of my point and sort-of rephrased my question, though I would say in somewhat weaker terms. Anomalous1 provided arguments that tobacco use does, in fact, have some effects on the body that some consider desirable. It’s well known that there is a calming effect; it’s well known as an appetite suppressant. I dated a girl who said it was useful as a purgative after meals. It has been proven to increase alertness and improve reaction times.
So that brings us back to my question and it’s very much like the issue of peanuts that Rivka noted: There are those who react in severely negative ways to tobacco and its byproducts and there are those who intentionally use tobacco products, feeling the benefits outweigh the related problems and/or side effects. Can we (should we) enact large-scale bans – not just in certain venues but throughout municipal or larger territories like cities, counties, and states – based on the ETS risk factors as well as damage and pollution associated with its use?
Anomalou1 did not provide any arguments-he provided vague personal claims that can certainly be attributed to his feeding his addiction(which caused the nervousness in the first place). Being well-known as an appetite suppressant doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a successful appetite suppressant.
I frequently see assertions by smokers that some minimal distance makes the smell undetectable. Well, maybe to smoke-deadened senses.
I have a terrible sense of smell. Usually I am the last person to become aware something spoiled in the work fridge. My wife is always asking me “do you smell that?” and I have to answer, “Not really.”
But I can smell cigarette smoke much better than smokers give me credit for. I literally have been at an outdoor posted no-smoking bus station and smelled it, and turned to look for the culprit, and it was someone waaaaay the hell across the lot, like more than a football field, downwind of me. I was in an apartment on the fifth floor once and correctly recognized that a smoker had entered the ground floor lobby. Trust me, many nonsmokers have better senses of smell than i do. We smell that stink when smokers think we don’t.
I couldn’t agree more with what Sailboat said. The other day I was at a restaurant with my wife and told her I smelled cigarette smoke. They haven’t allowed smoking in NJ restaurants since the Nineties…it was the smoke stench coming from the clothing of a heavy smoker somewhere on the other side of the room. The unpleasant aroma of smoking easily travels dozens of yards.
I wish I has a dollar for every smoker who said “I don’t smell of smoke-- well, maybe for a few minutes right after I have a cigarette, but then it goes away.”
In your dreams. You stink of smoke ALL THE TIME. Your apartment smells of smoke, and so does your car. Just because you hold the cigarette out the window like the world is your ashtray, your car still stinks. I wish Uber had a “request non-smoking driver” option. I once took the crummier of two available apartments in a unit, because it was obvious a smoker had previously lived in the better one. I would rather have had roaches than the stench of stale cigarettes.
Irishman has got it in the second line. It’s “sidestream” smoke that is actually the culprit here.
[QUOTE=American Cancer Society] Sidestream smoke: Smoke from the lighted end of a cigarette, pipe, or cigar, or tobacco burning in a hookah. This type of smoke has higher concentrations of cancer-causing agents (carcinogens) and is more toxic than mainstream smoke. It also has smaller particles than mainstream smoke. These smaller particles make their way into the lungs and the body’s cells more easily.
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[QUOTE=American Lung Assoc] Secondhand smoke causes approximately 7,330 deaths from lung cancer and 33,950 deaths from heart disease each year.1
Between 1964 and 2014, 2.5 million people died from exposure to secondhand smoke, according to a report from the U.S. Surgeon General. The report also concluded that secondhand smoke is a definitive cause of stroke.1
There is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke and even short-term exposure potentially can increase the risk of heart attacks.2
Secondhand smoke contains hundreds of chemicals known to be toxic or carcinogenic, including formaldehyde, benzene, vinyl chloride, arsenic ammonia and hydrogen cyanide.2
Secondhand smoke can cause heart attacks; even relatively brief exposure can trigger a heart attack, according to a report by the Institute of Medicine.3
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As for Czarcasm’s question I don’t have a cite to any studies but I believe that it’s the lungs excellent ability to filter the air that makes smoking so harmful to them in the first place; trapping all the tar and other ingredients.
That’s an interesting question for which I do not have a definitive answer. My impression is that they are reasonably effective - they are small pockets of damp flesh. The results of long term accumulation of tar are also suggestive. However, I suspect they aren’t anything like a HEPA filter. Smoker’s breath smells pretty foul, suggesting there is still plenty of soot and other agents present.
A related question is just how effective the filters on cigarettes actuality are.