# Second Hand Smoke is too bad for you **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 28, 2006, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463 "2006-06-28T08:10:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/201 "2006-06-29T17:59:50Z")
[QUOTE=Jackmannii] **Beer** , I have corrected your misstatement about what the Surgeon General’s report addresses [/quote] No you haven’t. The recommendations from the Surgeon General’s website you quoted are **not** part of the report. In fact, searching the full report, in the word “outdoor” appears only 90 times in 727 pages. And when it does appear, it almost exclusively talking about the exchange of outdoor air with indoor air and the effects of that exchange on indoor air quality. The report simply has nothing to say about the health effects of outdoor smoking. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/202 "2006-06-29T19:42:26Z")
[QUOTE=UncleBeer] The recommendations from the Surgeon General’s website you quoted are **not** part of the report. [/QUOTE] From the link I provided:\* “Information contained on this highlight sheet has been taken directly from The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General.”\* Wrong yet again, **Beer**. I was going to add a wally but omitted it to spare your feelings. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/203 "2006-06-29T19:57:15Z")
[QUOTE=Polycarp] I have been in the one room designated for smoking in an eleven-story office building, vented separately by fans to the outside (to an area where people do not congregate and where motor vehicles idle), accessible only through a double set of doors providing an airlock of sorts, and had people come in and criticize because people were smoking there, in the one place set aside for them to smoke. [/QUOTE] Not to invalidate everything you say, but twice in your post you talk about what sound like separate air spaces inside buildings for smokers. The SG’s report specifically maintains that such spaces are NOT safe. [QUOTE] 6. Eliminating smoking in indoor spaces fully protects nonsmokers from exposure to secondhand smoke. Separating smokers from nonsmokers, cleaning the air, and ventilating buildings cannot eliminate exposures of nonsmokers to secondhand smoke. Supporting Evidence [ul] [li] Conventional air cleaning systems can remove large particles, but not the smaller particles or the gases found in secondhand smoke. [/li][li] Routine operation of a heating, ventilating, and air conditioning system can distribute secondhand smoke throughout a building. [/li][li] The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), the preeminent U.S. body on ventilation issues, has concluded that ventilation technology cannot be relied on to control health risks from secondhand smoke exposure. [/ul] [/li][/QUOTE] [Context here](http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/factsheets/factsheet6.html) Sailboat ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/204 "2006-06-29T19:57:52Z")
Bullshit. Go download the full report and search it yourself for the text string “day care center” or “day-care center” or “daycare center.” There are 7 instances total. None of which match the sentence from your link recommending " Making sure that your children’s day care center or school is smoke-free." So, the stuff on that page simply is not in the report. The thing doesn’t even have a section of recommendations for avoiding SHS. ---
**Author:** ![davenportavenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@davenportavenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davenportavenger)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/205 "2006-06-29T20:09:07Z")
[QUOTE=Sailboat] The SG’s report specifically maintains that such spaces are NOT safe. [/QUOTE] If you are so delicate, go live in a bubble. The outside world is too harsh for you. Again, why are stray fumes from cars okay but a tiny bit of smoke wafting underneath the door of an employees-only lounge is not? Polycarp’s gay analogy is super apt. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/206 "2006-06-29T20:15:31Z")
[QUOTE=davenportavenger] Again, why are stray fumes from cars okay but a tiny bit of smoke wafting underneath the door of an employees-only lounge is not? . [/QUOTE] Cars fill a need, they save lives as well as take them. Smoking does nothing but kill. ---
**Author:** ![davenportavenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@davenportavenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davenportavenger)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/207 "2006-06-29T20:21:33Z")
[QUOTE=DrDeth] Cars fill a need, they save lives as well as take them. Smoking does nothing but kill. [/QUOTE] So then, you admit that you really don’t care about the state of your lungs but instead about the personal habits of others? That you’d rather inhale 100cc’s of various debris from a passing ambulance than 1cc of debris from a smoker\*? Just like I thought. \*These numbers have been pulled out of my ass and are here to illustrate a point, not provide scientific accuracy. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/208 "2006-06-29T20:36:01Z")
**Beer** , you are delusional or hoping that a falsehood will become truth through repetition. The Surgeon General’s statements regarding avoidance of secondhand smoke in schools, day care centers and businesses 1) carry the heading of the 6/27 Surgeon General’s report at the top of the page, 2) carry a publication date of 6/27, and 3) the page explicitly states that the fact sheet statements are taken directly from the report. What’s the point of your latest evasion? The recommendations are clearly part of the report, and reflect the conviction of the Surgeon General that significant secondhand smoke exposures are not limited to the home and workplace. Further, what’s the point of your dancing around the subject of “outdoor” secondhand smoke exposure, when the Surgeon General has concluded that _there is no safe level_ of secondhand smoke exposure? Do you believe that if one is exposed to secondhand smoke outdoors there is something fundamentally different that makes it safe? Sorry, but this sort of magical thinking will not impress anyone who grasps the meaning of the Surgeon General’s report and has to contend with smokers who congregate around building entrances and other outdoor venues where smoke builds up. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/209 "2006-06-29T20:41:26Z")
[QUOTE=Jackmannii] Further, what’s the point of your dancing around the subject of “outdoor” secondhand smoke exposure, when the Surgeon General has concluded that _there is no safe level_ of secondhand smoke exposure? Do you believe that if one is exposed to secondhand smoke outdoors there is something fundamentally different that makes it safe? [/QUOTE] Please tell me what “no safe level” means. Please. If I am in a 10-story building, and there is one breakroom designated to smoke…and let’s even pretend that there are no filtering systems, and the smoke is able to leak out the cracks in the door…seriously, what is the risk that anyone who works there is going to die from this? The words “no safe level” mean nothing. Every activity you could ever think of has inherent risk…even walking down the street. I am probaby 100 times more likely to be killed by being run over by a bus on my way to the bar, than I am from spending 2 hours a week hanging out in the bar breathing in the smoke. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/210 "2006-06-29T21:03:30Z")
Jackmannii, despite the statement from the page of recommendations you linked which says “Information contained on this highlight sheet has been taken directly from The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General,” the text strings on that page are simply not in the report. If the text strings are not contained in the report, then they simply cannot have been taken directly from it. I don’t understand why you keep insisting on such an easily disproved falsehood. Second, the date you give for the report, June 27, 2006 doesn’t appear on the report itself either. ---
**Author:** ![Mince](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecd19e/32.png) [@Mince](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mince)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/211 "2006-06-29T21:19:02Z")
[QUOTE=Seven] :rolleyes: [/QUOTE] Hmmmmm. This is a fairly strong rebut. I’m going to have to ponder a bit for a rejoinder. Ok. Done. My response to you is: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/212 "2006-06-29T21:27:17Z")
**Beer** , at this point we’ll just have to leave it up for grabs whether you’re a) delusional, b) deliberately lying, c) terminally evasive, or d) all of the above. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/213 "2006-06-29T21:37:37Z")
I don’t get it man. You insist the “fact sheet” you linked is taken directly from the report. Yet the text strings in your link aren’t to be found in the report. How am I any of those things? ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/214 "2006-06-29T21:37:39Z")
[“I’m the guy in the bar who doesn’t smoke except when he drinks. Got a cigarette?”](http://www.theonion.com/content/node/37928) ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/215 "2006-06-29T21:53:58Z")
**Jackmannii** , you could prove your point very easily by simply stating where in the report (preferably with page numbers) the information in the highlight sheet is taken from. With the magic of searching, this task should be trivial to do. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/216 "2006-06-29T21:54:01Z")
[QUOTE=Jackmannii] Wrong. The report [includes the following](http://surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/factsheets/factsheet3.html): \*"You can protect yourself and your loved ones by: Making your home and car smoke-free. \*\*Asking people not to smoke around you and your children. Making sure that your children’s day care center or school is smoke-free. Choosing restaurants and other businesses that are smoke-free. Thanking businesses for being smoke-free. Letting owners of businesses that are not smoke-free know that secondhand smoke is harmful to your family’s health\*\*\*. (bolding added) Thus, the Surgeon General’s report is referring not just to home or workplace, but explicitly to day care centers, schools and businesses one patronizes. There are no limitations (regarding specific settings) to their recommendations to avoid secondhand smoke. [/QUOTE] Those are the recommendations. You’ll notice another of the recommendations states that banning all indoor smoking is preferable to having separately ventilated areas for smokers, because it not only protects non-smokers from secondhand smoke, but the [executive summary’s](http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/report/executivesummary.pdf) (PDF WARNING!) foreword says: > [@](#): > > \*\* these policies reduce tobacco use by smokers and change public attitudes about tobacco use from acceptable to unacceptable.\*\* I do have to say I appreciate their honesty. ---
**Author:** ![YaWanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/bbce88/32.png) [@YaWanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YaWanna)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/217 "2006-06-29T22:05:10Z")
[QUOTE=yojimbo] Bar profits are down in Ireland in a lot of areas. Off licence profits are up. A lot of people have moved their drinking to their home due to the smoking ban. Lots of bars have spent lots of money creating nice outdoor covered seating areas but some don’t have the space to do that. They are the ones being hit badly. That said there are a lot of people smoking less or giving up altogether and employees health is obviously helped. I’m not exactly crying over Irish publicans losing money as they’ve been screwing people with unneeded price hikes for years now. [/QUOTE] Interestingly, US media reports have stated that bar revenues have not been substantially hurt in Washington (state, for you non-PNWerners) by the smoking ban in bars. I have not seen hard data, but if I’m not mistaken, then it should be easy enough to google up or whatever. My point is - well, before I get to my point, let me add: there is a growing number of drinking establishments in my area (Portland, OR - where beer, wine, and even whisky cultures thrive) going totally non-smoking by choice. None of them seem to have been hurt by it - you can barely find a parking space at some of them. Now that they are available, many people are happy to take their business there. I think that as long as I have a place I can go that’s smoke-free, I see no reason to force everyplace that serves drinks to be smoke-free. It was only when those smoke-free places did not exist that I was annoyed, but the free market took care of that - a need was perceived & filled. Yay for the free market! So I guess I sort of made my point by way of anecdote. Anyway, I don’t smoke, never have, never will. Both my parents smoked when I was growing up; now they don’t. I’ve worked in smoking and non-smoking workplaces. I’m the only non-smoker in the company I work for now. I don’t desire to force anyone to quit smoking against their will. I totally agree that people have the right to partake of any legal substance they choose, as long as other people are not harmed as a direct result. I don’t think I’ve ever harassed anyone, except people I’ve had to live with, about smoking - oh, excuse me, I forgot that when the smoke makes me cough, I’m harassing the smokers. Yes, smoke makes me cough. I don’t fake the cough, or exaggerate it passive-aggressively. It also makes my eyes burn & turn bright red. Sometimes it makes me sneeze, too. I suppose I owe smokers an apology if I do any of those things while they’re smoking around me outdoors (because I certainly am NOT one to enter a designated smoking area if I can help it). What I don’t get is the smokers who say they hate all non-smokers (I could swear at least some of you said as much, even if you meant it to be qualified in some way in your head). WTF? You hate people for not smoking? Get real! This is ridiculous; much more so than, say, commenting about “one molecule of smoke” or “involuntary smoking.” And the name calling: “whiny babies.” You know, fuck you sideways with a chainsaw, man. I’m no drama queen and I don’t whine at anyone. I just don’t smoke, and I don’t hang around smokers - that doesn’t make me a “whiny baby.” Yes, I saw that term flung at nonsmokers in general; it was not qualified with “those who make too big a deal, etc.” or anything like that. I don’t know - I read the first 3 pages of this without getting pissed, trying to look at the smokers’ side of things, and could still sympathize up to a point - but now I have to look behind me to see that point, so I think it’s time for me to stop reading this thread. Yeah, I know, it’s the Pit, blah blah blah - but really, is it **mandatory** to stoop to the point of hatefulness when debating any issue in the Pit? Because I don’t think it should be - I think a little understanding on both sides (“hmm, how would I feel if I were a smoker? is there room to recognize not just their rights but their needs without mine being trampled on? maybe…”/“hmm, just because I smoke, maybe that doesn’t mean all nonsmokers are out to demonize me and take away my rights, maybe they just need to be assured that they can have ‘safe’ places, etc.”). Nope, time to go cool off. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/218 "2006-06-29T22:59:23Z")
[QUOTE=yBeayf] **Jackmannii** , you could prove your point very easily by simply stating where in the report (preferably with page numbers) the information in the highlight sheet is taken from. With the magic of searching, this task should be trivial to do. [/QUOTE] Before you go further with this folie a deux with **Beer** , consider that (as I quoted previously), _the information on the fact sheet_, according to the Surgeon General, is taken directly from the report. That does not mean that the language is _identical_ to the language in the report, or that all elements of the report including attachments are searchable. It might then follow that a search will not obtain the desired results. I doubt highly that anyone here (including me) has read every word of every element and reference in the report. I’ll let you know if and when I come up with the page number(s) you request. Regardless, **the fact sheet itself** is explicitly a part of the Surgeon General’s report of 6/27/06, as amply and repeatedly demonstrated. If this ludicrous denial by you and **Beer** constitutes the sort of strategy die-hard “smokers’ rights” advocates plan to use to fight the Surgeon General’s report, then I foresee dismal times ahead for the “movement”.\* \*We shouldn’t be surprised, since denial lies at the heart of smokers’ response to decades’ worth of bad news about the dangers of smoking and of secondhand smoke. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2006, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/219 "2006-06-30T00:21:24Z")
[QUOTE=Polycarp] You know, I skimmed through this thread with an eerie sense of deja viewing it for the first time. And I was right. Change the names, the cast of characters, and the specific referents for the points made, and it’s the same topic, from GD and other Pit threads, on, oh, the morality of homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion, eminent domain, gun control, and a whole slew of other issues. The fight is not between smokers and non-smokers – even though that’s what one gets at first glance. _ **It’s between people with a laissez faire attitude and those who believe their preferred way to do or eschew things should be mandatory on all.** _ And there are people from both those viewpoints on both sides of the smoking line. [/QUOTE] You are right. [QUOTE=Polycarp] But them take the alternative view. I have been in the one room designated for smoking in an eleven-story office building, vented separately by fans to the outside (to an area where people do not congregate and where motor vehicles idle), accessible only through a double set of doors providing an airlock of sorts, and had people come in and criticize because people were smoking there, in the one place set aside for them to smoke. I have sat on a bench in the designated smoking area outside an airline terminal, at the extreme northeast end of the terminal quite literally a quarter mile from the main entrance – for kicks, I paced it off – and had people walk up there and criticize me and others for smoking there. [/QUOTE] That’s the problem… no place should be allowed, to hear some people talk. [QUOTE=Polycarp] The point I am making here is pretty damn simple, and I’m surprised that nobody has hit on it yet: Whatever your stance on the smoking issue, you do not have the right to regulate the lives of others to insist they do what you choose to do, or refrain from what you choose not to do. [/QUOTE] Exactly. [QUOTE=Polycarp] If I choose to smoke, and there is only a 300-square-foot room in a complex of 9,000,000 square feet, or a given small area of roofed terrace outside one area of the building, where smoking is permitted, I will go to that room or that terrace. I have no right to impose my smoking on you anywhere else. But you equally have no right to demand that that room or terrace area be made non-smoking along with the rest of the complex to protect your right to clean air anywhere in the structure you might choose to go. [/QUOTE] Right again. You put it just the way it should be done. Now all the “we know what’s best for you” types, and the “we think it’s icky so you better stop” types can kiss my entire ass. ---
**Author:** ![Seven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Seven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seven)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2006, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463/220 "2006-06-30T00:49:40Z")
[QUOTE=Mince] Hmmmmm. This is a fairly strong rebut. I’m going to have to ponder a bit for a rejoinder. Ok. Done. My response to you is: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: [/QUOTE] I figured as much. I don’t see how you could continue to make an argument after that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-hand-smoke-is-too-bad-for-you/362463.md?page=12)