I recall reading that smoking in the hallway outside an Ames test lab will trigger a false positive for carcinogens.
While not proof that there is a connection between second hand smoke and cancer, at least should be easy to see if second hand smoke sets off an Ames test.
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Cecil’s column can be found on-line at this link:
Does second-hand smoke really cause cancer? (02-Jun-2000)
I don’t doubt that there are carcinogens in second hand smoke. I think the issue here is whether or not there are enough carcinogens in second hand smoke to be concerned about. If we believe the, “second hand smoke is more dangerous than first hand smoke(?)” myth, we would see a lot more lung cancer in people who are around smokers than in actual smokers. This is not something I’ve observed, although it could be true.
I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of second-hand smoke being more dangerous as first-hand smoke, merely that it is dangerous enough that a non-smoker who spends time in the company of smokers should be concerned.
As with any situation, I would imagine it varies a lot, depending on the quantity of second-hand smoke one receives. For instance, standing outside upstream to one smoker for one cigarette probably isn’t much to be concerned about. Sitting in a small room with poor ventilation while half a dozen people chain-smoke 3 packs a day is probably not very healthy.
How does one quantify those risks for the average person in real-world situations?
I don’t suppose this really counts as second hand or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), but it does show the lengths the Smoking Nazi’s will go to to convince the general populace of the dangers of tobacco. Here’s the abstract of a study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in June 1999. It purports to show cause between maternal smoking and violent crime perpetrated by male offspring.
Maternal Smoking During Pregnancy and Risk of Criminal Behavior Among Adult Male Offspring in the Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort
Authors: Pirkko Räsänen, M.D., Ph.D., Helinä Hakko, M.Sc., Matti Isohanni, M.D., Ph.D., Sheilagh Hodgins, Ph.D., Marjo-Riitta Järvelin, M.D., Ph.D. and Jari Tiihonen, M.D., Ph.D.
OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to test the hypothesis that maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with greater risk for criminal behavior of the offspring in adulthood.
METHOD: An unselected, general population cohort composed of 11,017 subjects (5,636 men, 5,381 women) was followed up prospectively from the sixth month of pregnancy to age 28 years. Interviews with the mother during the pregnancy, health records, and an assessment of the offspring at age 1 year provided information on risk factors. The Ministry of Justice provided information on criminal offenses for all subjects.
RESULTS: Because of the low rate of criminal offenses among women, the present analyses are restricted to men (N=5,636). Compared to the sons of mothers who did not smoke, the sons of mothers who smoked during pregnancy had more than a twofold risk of having committed a violent crime or having repeatedly committed crimes, even when other biopsychosocial risk factors were controlled. While maternal smoking during pregnancy alone explained 4% of the variance associated with violent offenses among male offspring, it was not significantly associated with nonviolent offenses among male offspring. When maternal smoking during pregnancy was combined with a maternal age of less than 20 years, a single-parent family, an unwanted pregnancy, and a developmental lag in walking or talking, the odds ratios for violent offenses increased up to nine-fold and for persistent offenses up to 14-fold.
CONCLUSIONS: Maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with violent offenses and persistent offenses, but not with nonviolent offenses, among male offspring in adulthood.
Let’s see if we can find a few flaws in this study.
[ol]
[li]The entire sample of female subjects (offspring) was disregarded due to a low incidence of violent crime.[/li][li]The entire increase in crime is laid at the door of tobacco. There is no mention of other known factors that contribute to crime, like: (these apply to both subject and mother)[/li][ul]
[li]Economic status.[/li][li]Alcohol use.[/li][li]Drug use.[/li][li]Mental health.[/li][/ul]
[li]The subjects of the study are all from one region of one country.[/li][li]And if tobacco use is the causative agent, how about telling us the incidence of smoking in the male subjects.[/li][/ol] [/list]
It appears to me that the results of this study were predetermined. Ya gotta love junk science. And before anybody jumps me, I’m a former smoker.
Without wishing to be difficult UncleBeer, when you state:
you have clearly missed the bit in the abstract that says:
which at least sounds like it is trying to cover the issues you raised.
picmr
I think the point of not including women is that the sample size is lower. Pulling numbers out of thin air, if 50% of men commit crimes, and 10 percent of women, a ten percent increase would raise these numbers to 55 and 11 percent, respectively. The 1 percent change in women might be below the noise level. At any rate, it woudn’t invalidate the results for male offspring, it only means the study doesn’t apply (necessarily) to women.
I’m not sure why 3 would matter. If you had different regions of the country represented, it would be one more factor they’d have to control for.
Number 4 would be nice to know, especially if there is a correlation between mothers smoking and their children smoking later. This, and the “biopsychosocial risk factors” may be explained in more detail in the full paper.
I agree, it’d be interesting to see the full paper, but not interesting enough to shell out the
Also, UncleBeer, there is an extrapolation that doesn’t really follow. From the abstract of the paper…
And from your following commentary:
The study addresses whether the two are associated, not whether one causes the other.
I’m going to follow up on my own post, because I realize it may need some explanation in this case. Some will undoubtedly wonder “since the smoking is during pregnancy, and obviously preceeds the criminal behavior in the offspring, isn’t association the same as causation in this case?”
This still doesn’t follow, as the causative agent may be a third factor that contributes to both. Consider, for instance, value systems passed down through families that reflect attitudes toward following social norms or engaging in risky behavior.
The lower the sample size, the higher the noise level. I don't know the incidence of violent crime amongst women, but I suspect it's low enough that they simply didn't have enough violent women for reasonable-sized error bars.
No. 4% of the increase is laid at the door of tobacco.
Which can be taken to indicate that it's only applicable to people from that area, but that's unlikely.
There's nothing to imply that the results are pre-determined, other than it shows harm to tobacco. Since tobacco is harmless, that's enough to prove it's flawed.I would like to know how you can tell second hand cigarette smoke causes cancer, and not other airborne pollutants like car exhaust, smog etc. You can’t get your test subjects away from those things, and they could be affecting the results.
Can I publish a paper saying my neighbours wood burning fire causes cancer? 
Mouseduck asks how to prove that wood smoke causes cancer. To duplicate the findings of tobacco smoke, one would do a number of studies involving several thousand people. Do some studies based on questionaires about exposure to wood smoke, some on blood test measurements of wood smoke byproducts. Then isolate for confounding variables such as socioeconomic status, etc. Then, compare the number of deaths of exposed people to the unexposed people in a class. If the increased risk is >100%, according to our wise Cecil, you’ve proven causality! Causality is further demonstrated when there is a dose-response relationship: more wood smoke byproducts, more cancer.
UncleBeer found a paper that said that poor white uneducated noncrazy NONSMOKING parents have fewer criminal children than poor white uneducated noncrazy SMOKING parents. He calls this Nazi slurs against smokers.
Cecil says the EPA
> cooked the numbers by using a confidence interval
> of 90 percent rather than … 95 percent.
The EPA’s rules allow it to use 90 percent when one can reasonably conclude that there is no health benefit from the substance.
Cecil claims that
> the EPA’s evidence that ETS is carcinogenic
> comes perilously close to noise level–you’re
> not sure if you’re seeing a real effect or
> just random spikes in the data. … Whatever
> song and dance you may get from the
> statisticians, skeptical observers prefer
> to see an increased risk of at least 100
> percent before they consider a relationship
> to be established beyond reasonable doubt.
What action would you take if there were dozens of articles in the medical literature showing a increased risk of more than 100% (CI > 2.0)? There are reports showing >100% risk for lung cancer, but let’s just pick one disease such as SIDS. Note the CI of the following reports.
http://www.bmj.org/cgi/content/abstract/313/7051/195
" The risk of death rose with increasing postnatal exposure
" to tobacco smoke, which had an additive effect among
" those also exposed to maternal smoking during pregnancy
" (2.93; 1.56 to 5.48).
http://www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/abstract/91/5/893?ijkey=eiLGXo8sFw8l.
" the risk increased with increasing levels of maternal
" smoking. Smoking by the father and other household
" members increased the "risk (odds ratio [OR] = 2.41,
" 95% CI = 1.92, 3.02 and OR = 1.54, "95% CI = 1.20,.99,
" respectively)
http://www.bmj.org/cgi/content/abstract/314/7093/1516
"The risk increased with the number of parents smoking "(P<0.0001), with the number of cigarettes smoked by mother "or father (P=0.0001),
http://www.bmj.org/cgi/content/abstract/313/7051/195
"The risk of death rose with increasing postnatal exposure "to tobacco smoke, which had an additive effect among those "also exposed to maternal smokingduring pregnancy (2.93; "1.56 to 5.48).
One important thing that Cecil didn’t mention concerning the EPA’s meta-analysis: publication bias. Meta-analyses are generally frowned upon by epidemiologists because of a few things, including publication bias. If two people perform studies, and one finds a correlation, but the other doesn’t, then the one finding a correlation is more likely to get published. So by doing a meta-analysis, you’re very likely to be studying pre-biased data.
Since governments used the EPA’s report to severely restrict people’s freedom*, I’d certainly like to see a lot more scientific certainty behind the findings.
CurtC writes:
> One important thing that Cecil didn’t mention
> concerning the EPA’s meta-analysis: publication bias.
Yep, when the possibility of publication bias was entered into the calculation, the percent risk dropped a FEW PERCENT!
> Since governments used the EPA’s report to severely
> restrict people’s freedom*, I’d certainly like to
> see a lot more scientific certainty behind the findings.
The market can work correctly to “penalize” those restaraunts with hazardous environments. They will have to pay a bit higher wage (or hire more desparate people) and charge less money (or accept more desparate clientel) IF the public knows about the hazards therein.
The problem is that the market cannot work when people are not aware of the dangers of secondhand smoke. For example, if the public understood the medical literature showing a 95% CI a 50% increase in lung cancer risk for restaraunt workers in smoky places, then the market could swiftly “correct” the situation. On the contrary, we have people overstating the flaws in a 1993 gov’t report, in spite of tobacco company’s admissions (public & private) about SHS, and dozens of papers showing a statistically signficant increase in risk.
Irishman wrote:
I have.
It was a scientific-sounding rumor, repeated to me about 2 years ago by this really cute Russian woman. She said that a smoker’s lungs only extracts 30% of the nicotine from a puff on a cigarette, but the lungs of everybody else around him who breathes his second-hand smoke “get all of that remaining 70% of the cigarette’s nicotine.”
This is an absurd extrapolation from the simple fact that the lungs will only absorb about 30% of the nicotine in any smoke they inhale. The thing is, the non-smokers lungs will also only absorb 30% of any nicotine they happen to inhale. The idea that somebody sitting with a smoker gets a 70/30 share of the smoker’s nicotine would only be true if the smoker exhaled into a bottle, and the person he was with breathed only the air from that bottle until all the smoke was gone from it. It doesn’t take into account the wide dispersal of the second-hand smoke through the air, or the smoker re-breathing any of his own exhaled smoke, or the eventual precipitation of the heavier smoke particles and breakdown of the lighter chemicals.
It kinda reminded me of that anti-second-hand-smoke TV ad campaign going on a few years ago in California. The ads lamented the 140 people who would die in California this year from second-hand smoke. That’s an awfully small percentage of the population, and blaming their deaths on second-hand smoke seems specious, but it had shock value.
gregjohn wrote:
Pardon me for asking, but how can one know what a company’s private admissions are?
Ah, but the crusaders in this War Against Smokers DO say that shs is more dangerous than first-hand smoke. Some even say it’s twice as deadly! Of course, that’s nonsense but those whose prime goal in life is to create a smokefree world don’t even question it. As they don’t question the figures thrown around by the anti-tobacco cartel about 400,000 deaths a year or 3000 kids a day taking up the habit.
One of the few well-planned and well-carried-out studies recently from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, at the request of the US Dept. of Energy, shows that the levels of shs in a restaurant/bar setting are far below OSHA’s approved standards, but we don’t see the politicians, body parts organizations, and the charity cartel rushing to repeal smoking bans and giving that free choice back to business owners.
And, of course, there are studies galore on the effect of shs on the spouses of smokers showing little or no statistical significance after 40-50 years.
Nonsense. The 1993 EPA report decided their outcome in advance, then set out to prove it. Judge Osteen saw through the ploy and wrote a scathing opinion in his decision to strike it down. Post refs to some of these “dozens” of papers showing a statistically significant increase in risk. The risk in chlorinated water is nearly twice that of shs, even according to the EPA’s figures.
Yes, let’s do pick SIDS. Because the anti-tobacco activists are so quick to lay blame, here’s a letter from SIDS Alliance to John (“If you can smell it, it’s killing you!”) Banzhaf III, Esquire, Executive Director, ASH in reference to one of ASH’s incorrect and harmful reports (caps added so you won’t miss them in your zeal to champion these liars and cheats):
"…STATISTICALLY, passive smoke exposure is a recognized FACTOR for SIDS. To date, NO DIRECT CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED. IN FACT, THE MAJORITY OF INFANTS BORN TO SMOKING PARENTS DO NOT DIE OF SIDS. And since MANY SIDS DEATHS OCCUR IN A SMOKE-FREE ENVIRONMENT, we must refrain from making smoke exposure appear to be linked to all SIDS deaths.
"The sensational heading for one of your recent Internet reports, “Smoking Parents Are Killing Their Infants,” has gone too far. … It is likely that SIDS may be caused by a subtle developmental delay, an anotomical defect, or a functional failure. INSENSITIVE GENERALIZATIONS about SIDS braodcast through print or the electronic media serve only TO PERPETUATE THE PUBLIC’S MISCONCEPTIONS. The last thing we need to do to parents who suffer this tragedy is to stigmatize or marginalize them.
“Your literature states that smoking “kills more than 2000 infants each year from SIDS.” Any published figures are SHEER SPECULATION, OR GUESSES, not grounded in actual experimentation. …”
(signed Phipps Y. Cohe, National Public Affairs Director)
ASH refused to change its message and continues to post this irresponsible drivel to this day.