Second Hand Smoke

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
21

When you find twice the nicotine in the blood of SIDS-dead babies than other-disease dead babies, it’s closer to causality than guessing.

What does the SIDS Alliance say about smoking & SIDS?
http://sidsalliance.org/facts/

"Stop smoking around your baby.
" Findings from the National Center for Health Statistics
" demonstrate that women who smoke cigarettes during or
" after pregnancy put their babies at increased risk for
" SIDS. Babies exposed to smoke only after birth were twice
" as likely to die from SIDS as those whose mothers did not
" smoke at all. And, mothers who smoked both during and
" after pregnancy tripled their babies’ risk for SIDS.
" Recent studies have found that the risk of SIDS rises
" with each additional smoker in the household, the
" numbers of cigarettes smoked a day, and the length of
" the infant’s exposure to cigarette smoke. Components of
" smoke are believed to have a negative impact on the
" infant’s developing lungs and nervous system and to
" cause abnormalities in the developing brain. Smoke
" exposure may also disrupt the arousal mechanism in
" infants, interfering with a baby’s ability to wake from
" sleep. Parents are advised not to smoke during pregnancy
" and the critical first year of life, and not allow anyone
" else to smoke around the baby either!

What’ was the EPA’s sin?
> Nonsense. The 1993 EPA report decided their outcome
> in advance, then set out to prove it

In other words, the EPA’s rules allow it to use a 90% confidence interval if there is no expected health benefit from a substance, but 95% is required if benefits or detriments can be expected. Osteen called the ‘assumption of no benefit’, as you put it, “deciding the outcome in advance.”

> public and private admissions

Privately, the tobacco companies’ documents show they understood SHS to be a health detriment. Publicly, Phillip Morris’ web site

contains links to many interesting scientific papers.

One journal article in Thorax prominently displayed by a link on the Phillip Morris web page says:
" CONCLUSIONS Substantial benefits to children would
" arise if parents stopped smoking after birth, even if the
" mother smoked during pregnancy. Policies need to be
" developed which reduce smoking amongst parents and
" protect infants and young children from exposure to
" environmental tobacco smoke.

Another link on the Phillip Morris web page is to the American Council on Science and Health paper which says:
http://www.acsh.org/publications/booklets/ets.html
" The scientific evidence that tobacco smoke in indoor
" environments is associated with acute and chronic
" respiratory illnesses, particularly in children,
" supports the adaptation of measures designed to reduce
" or prevent exposure to ETS.

There’s evidence enough to support taking efforts to reduce exposure of children to ETS. There is basically a causal mechanism out there, and the “smoking gun” of greater nicotine in SIDS-dead babies.

22

In typical anti fashion, you throw out comments like this and expect everyone to believe they’re true. To begin with,
nicotine doesn’t stay around to be tested; generally cotinine levels are checked to show presence of nicotine. Of course, eating a couple of medium sized potatoes will put as much cotinine in one’s blood as smoking several cigarettes, and unless the mother’s diet was included in this alleged ‘study,’ that’s a crock.

It really doesn’t matter WHAT a particular SIDS organization says about shs because their policies are determined by their dependency on funding from the Charity Cartel (the body parts bunch) and other bastions of the anti-smoker movement.

As for EPA’s “sin,” : “EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before research had begun,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge William Osteen. “Moreover,” wrote Osteen, the EPA “adjusted established procedure and scientific norms to validate the agency’s public conclusions.” In other words, the EPA dishonestly selected a small batch of studies that supported its desired conclusion – that secondhand smoke causes lung cancer – while ignoring a larger batch of studies that contradicted its finding.

The Cigarette Papers, compiled and edited by none other than nico-Nazi Stanton Glantz, have been quoted ad nauseum. Unfortunately, virtually all the quotes are taken out of context and mean nothing.
You seem to have overlooked something in all the links and quotes you’ve posted: Not one of them says “tobacco smoke” CAUSES any of the horrendous illnesses mentioned. All the qualifiers seem to just melt away when an anti gets hold of a quote: “is associated with” becomes “causes,” there “may be” an “increased risk” becomes “kills”.

Philip Morris and other tobacco companies have bowed to government extortion in an effort to keep their
shareholders happy and have put on their websites what they were required to do by the MSA. Notice, though, that
even on those websites, qualifiers reign supreme.

No one knows what “causes” SIDS, and anyone who says he does is a liar. People who jump on the anti-smoking
bandwagon aren’t helping find the cause, either.

23

I am sorry, I misspoke. I meant cotinine. Let’s not attack smokERS. Let’s encourage everyone to understand the dangers to children of being exposed to smokING. This is the only way for the free market to work.

> It really doesn’t matter WHAT a particular SIDS
> organization says about shs because their policies are

Back in the old days of this forum, people were saying, LISTEN to these health groups that are personally dealing with cases of SIDS.

> Of course, eating a couple of medium sized potatoes will
> put as much cotinine in one’s blood as smoking several
> cigarettes

Back in the old days of this forum, people were saying the association was BS because the confidence interval was not 95%, the increased risk was <100%, and there was not a dose-response relationship.

Viola! Lookee here!

  1. JOURNAL OF PEDIATRICS August 1998 • Volume 133 • Number 2 • p232 to p236
    Objective measurements of nicotine exposure in victims of sudden infant death syndrome and in other unexpected child deaths

“Self-reported maternal smoking” was shown to be associated with cotinine measurements in blood.
"Results: Compared with the age-matched infectious deaths, a significantly higher proportion of victims of SIDS had been significantly (92% vs 67%) or heavily exposed (25% vs 0%) to nicotine, (P < .05)…
“Conclusions: Victims of SIDS are more often and more heavily exposed to tobacco smoke doses before death than are infants who have sudden infectious deaths. Accidental death in infancy and childhood is often associated with a significant exposure to nicotine.”
2. JOURNAL OF PEDIATRICS, March 1994, Vol. 124, No. 3.
Meconium analysis to assess fetal exposure to nicotine by active and passive maternal smoking
http://www.mosby.com/scripts/om.dll/serve?action=searchDB&searchDBfor=art&artType=abs&id=a52165&nav=abs

We measured nicotine metabolites (cotinine and trans-3´-hydroxycotinine) in meconium of infants of passive or active smokers as a direct marker of fetal exposure to tobacco smoke. Meconium was collected from 55 infants whose mothers were nonsmokers, passive smokers, or light or heavy active smokers. Nicotine metabolite concentration (NMC) in meconium was analyzed by radioimmunoassay and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Radioimmunoassay showed the following mean meconium NMCs (in nanograms per milliliter); nonsmoker, 10.9; passive smoker, 31.6; light active smoker; 34.7, and heavy active smoker, 54.6.

Deficient hypoxia awakening response in infants of smoking mothers: Possible relationship to sudden infant death syndrome

  1. JOURNAL OF PEDIATRICS, November 1995 • Volume 127 • Number 5 • p668 to p669

Babies of smoking mothers (shown both by statements by mother and by blood measurements of cotinine). In laboratory setting, babies of smoking mothers were less likely to arouse from hypoxia (reduced oxygen). The researchers conclude: “Conclusion: Infants of mothers who smoked during pregnancy have deficient hypoxic awakening responses, which may contribute to the increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome in infants of smoking mothers.”

  1. JOURNAL OF PEDIATRICS,
    July 1999 • Volume 135 • Number 1

Prenatal exposure to cigarette smoking is associated with a decrease in arousal in infants

Babies of smoking mothers are harder to wake up. “Conclusions: Newborns and infants born to smoking mothers had higher arousal thresholds to auditory challenges than those born to nonsmoking mothers. The impact of exposure to cigarette smoke occurred before birth.”

24

[QUOTE]
Viola! Lookee here!

Don’t call me Viola.

To begin with, not one of your refs said “smoking causes SIDS.” And there’s a reason for that: no one knows what causes SIDS. If they did, they could control or stop it. Crusaders in the War on Smokers use statistics as weapons to beat down any difference of opinion, any possibility that there may be a different, just as valid, way of looking at a situation.

For instance, the rate of SIDS deaths to births is miniscule so a sizable increase may not mean much at all (i.e., if one death occurs in non smokers and two occur in smokers, the rate would double, right?) The same is true when anti-smokers discuss lung cancer in smokers. Lung cancer in ANYONE is rare, and a very small percentage of smokers get it, but no one ever completes the argument.

Yes, smoking is a RISK FACTOR for SIDS. Smoking is a RISK FACTOR for lung cancer. Smoking is a RISK FACTOR for emphysema. Smoking is a RISK FACTOR for heart disease.

The world is full of risks, and the risk of dying is 100% for both smokers and non smokers. Adult Americans should be allowed to decide–without interference from the heavy hand of government–which risks they are willing to take.

25

Welcome aboard!

The net is that smoking in front of children is child abuse.

The net is that the public is insufficiently informed about the risk factors of health effects of smoking for the free market to work. Only some 60% of smokers believe that they themselves are at increased risk for heart disease, less of the public understands the risk factors for nonsmokers around them.

If everyone understood the risk factors, then yes, the market would punish the restaurants that make dangerous environments for workers and visiting children.

26

Point by point: The problem isn’t “smoking in front of children,” it’s “smoking a lot in the same airspace as children.” Nitpicky? A little. But the point is deeper; the reason advocates tend not to be very trustworthy is their wild exaggerations of risk. The risk for a kid who sits in a smoky restaurant for an hours’ lunch is negligible; the risk for a kid who spends virtually all day in the same room as its chainsmoking parents is considerable. And that doesn’t even address the earlier point: SIDS is sufficiently rare that even a substantial increase may be a “so what” issue.

My larger, more philosophical point: when you’ve got nearly 300 million people living in the country, there isn’t an activity worth undertaking that, directly or indirectly, won’t kill at least 50 of them a year. After all, life itself is a death sentence.

“The net is that the public is insufficiently informed about the risk factors of health effects of smoking for the free market to work. Only some 60% of smokers believe that they themselves are at increased risk for heart disease…”

This is a non sequitur. The fact that 40% of smokers don’t believe themselves to be at risk says absolutely nothing about their awareness of the risk. I’m forgetting the name of this phenomenon, but it’s well known – people have a substantial ability to convince themselves that a particular risk does not apply to them. Sometimes it’s based on a rational application of facts (for example, that my great-grandfather happily chain-smoked without serious disability to a sudden heart attack at 87), but more often it isn’t (I’d be ignoring that my grandfather died a horrible death of emphysema at 73).

Just because people know the risk factors doesn’t mean they’ll ever apply them in their daily lives. And quite frankly, that’s their entitlement, with one caveat: if they’re adults. Teens are absolutely hopeless at evaluating risk, and recent reports have indicated that nicotine’s effect on the brain (and consequently its addictive power) may be far greater for adolescents than for adults. My grandmother, who started smoking at 21, had no trouble quitting cold turkey 53 years later. My sister, who started at 12, hasn’t been able to despite several attempts.

What seems so frustrating to the anti-smokers is that so many people are willing to take risks that they themselves have forsworn. And in that they become petit fascists, insisting only their evaluations of risk are valid.

27

I think those arguments are flawed. Following that reasoning, you could argue that no dangerous activity should be illegal, because we’re all going to die anyway. So adults should be free to engage in any activity they want.

The fact is that no one is an island. Our society will have to pay for the consequences of an individual’s actions. An example is people that go hiking unprepared in dangerous areas. A rescue team might have to go (at taxpayer’s expense) risk their lives to find the careless person.

If people catch diseases from smoking, part of the cost will be incurred by the public through the form of insurance rates and/or government-assisted medical programs.

So I disagree with the larger philosophical point. The point in this case would be, do the benefits to society overweigh the loss of freedom incurred by smokers?

28

Absolutely true. I was told recently by an anti-tobacco crusader that if I wouldn’t look out for my own well being, it would be up to him or the government to do it. Them’s fightin’ words to one raised in my era.

29

No, I’m definitely NOT aboard YOUR boat!

Smoking in front of/around/near children is NOT child abuse. I was raised in a smoking family, my children were raised in a smoking family…none of us were abused.

Your statement is untrue. In a recent poll, smokers were much more likely to overstate their risks than to understate them. Smokers honestly BELIEVE what the anti-smokers say. Ipse dixit, of course. Say it often enough, and it will become true in the minds of the people. Very few smokers realize that more than twice as many of them will NEVER have a “smoking-related” illness than will, but that’s a fact. As for shs, it has been blown out of all proportion to the amount of harm it may actually do, even in the worst-case scenario of someone who lives with a smoker for 40-50 years and also works with smokers. The facts just don’t back up what you say.

Smoking has become a political/money/power issue, not a health issue, and the anti-smokers will use whatever they have to use, lie or truth, to have a smokefree world.

30

Wow, I think our country is in trouble.

Firstly, adults ARE free to engage in risky activities as long as they are legal. I don’t think Americans would allow the government to encroach so far into their lives as to try to ‘protect’ them from everything that might have a risk attached. At least, most Americans. I hope.

Smokers pay far more in taxes right now than they will ever use in medical care, according to the Congressional Research Service, New England Journal of Medicine, and many researchers.

So the larger philosophical point is: Should government be allowed to encroach further on the freedoms guaranteed us in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, or do we agree it is our “duty to keep a healthy body for the use of the State?”

31

The keyword being “as long as they are legal.” It is not legal for me to drive my car without wearing my seatbelt. It is not legal for me to try and shimmy up the Golden Gate Bridge or the Empire State Building. It is not legal for me to take heroin. It is not legal for me to commit suicide. et cætera.

So the answer to the question “should the USA government be allowed to prevent citizens from engaging in certain types of risky behaviour?” has been decided by legislative authorities to be yes.

The question then becomes “which types of behaviour should be controlled by the government?”

32 
 Which is why it's hard to study the issue--picking the effect up from the noise level of cancers caused by other things.

 What you have to do is see if people (or test animals) exposed to the item you are testing get cancer at a signifigantly higher rate than those who aren't exposed to the item in question but have similar exposures to other likely harmful items. (Thus if testing for second hand smoke, you need individuals living in similar pollution levels.)
33 
 And if you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a cow have? 4 -- calling it a leg doesn't make it one.
34

Sorry, Max, I missed this from you earlier:

If that’s correct, then let’s try a little algebra:

If x is the number of smokers who will have a “smoking-related” illness", and y is the total number of smokers, then we have

y (number of smokers) = x (number who will get sick) + 2x (number who won’t)

y = x + 2x

y = 3x

y/3 = x
It may be a fact, but that’s a full third. One in three smokers will get sick from smoking. The risks might be overstated as you say, but I reckon 33% is statistically significant, don’t you?

35

And to me a more important question is: Who decides?

36

I actually should have said “one in three smokers MAY get sick” and be counted in the CDC’s smoking mortality statistics. There’s no guarantee that even that third is ill from smoking. The stats are rigged and the same death (for instance, heart disease) may be counted as ‘smoking-related,’ ‘fat-related,’ ‘genetic,’ etc. regardless of the facts of the death.

The fact is, though, that smokers overwhelmingly thought they had a 50/50 chance, not the more realistic one, and they were still willing to take that risk.

37

To continue the thought, the ‘statistics’ being used to beat smokers up come from epidemiological studies, not medical science. Epidemiology is a mathematical, statistical discipline, used only when probability and statistics are applied to human health issues. Unfortunately, they’ve been strewn about in the media as if the layman could understand them and that’s not the case.

For instance, the latest figures suggest that non-smokers succumb to lung cancer at the rate of 7 per 100,000. However, smokers contract lung cancer at the rate of 156 per 100,000. This is 22 times the rate of non-smokers and is statistically significant in anyone’s language. Not only that, but it sounds very, very scary.

However, the percentage of smokers versus non-smokers who contract lung cancer is still miniscule. In non-smokers 99,993 per 100,000 people, or 99.993% of people will escape lung cancer. In smokers, 99.844% of people will smoke all their lives and not contract lung cancer. So the additional risk to smokers of contracting lung cancer is 0.149%. Not a figure to get hysterical over.

Even the most discredited studies on environmental tobacco smoke (and there are many) only suggest that those exposed run an additional 16% risk of contracting lung cancer (RR=1.16). So if the non-exposed non-smoker runs a 7 per
100,000 risk of contracting lung cancer from some other source, those exposed to ETS run a 7 x 16% = 1.12 per 100,000 greater risk of contracting lung cancer.

So the studies are what you make of them. And it still comes down to an adult American citizen being able to make his/her own decisions about the risk/benefit ratio from his/her lifestyle choices.

38

Arnold Winkelried: *The question then becomes “which types of behaviour should be controlled by the government?”
*

Max McGarrity: And to me a more important question is: Who decides?
Voters and legislators. With courts being involved when it comes to ruling on the constitutional validity of a certain law.

I have yet to hear a federal appeals court or the Supreme Court decide that a state or city is violating a person’s freedom with laws that, for example, forbid smoking in enclosed public places such as bars or restaurants.

39

Certainly a good argument for one’s own smoking (I smoke BTW) but not for second hand smoke, which is why it is such a big deal: if second hand smoke is a real problem, then the consent of non-smokers is a big issue.

Oh, and statistical significance does not mean “important”. It means “we’re pretty sure there is a relationship, it’s not random variation”.

picmr

40

I’m aware of the correct meaning of “statistical significance;” unfortunately, those who get their science news from the local newspaper most often don’t.

As for the bugbear of secondhand smoke, all we have are the epidemiological studies which, in toto, show there IS no “statistical significance,” meaning “we’re not able to show a relationship.” But those studies have been reported as if the danger was overwhelmingly certain.

Even if there is no real danger in shs, though, I have no problem with ‘consent of non-smokers.’ None of us do. Our point is that there should be accommodation for both. Assuming, as the CDC says, 25% of the population smokes, the free market should allow for 25% of bars, restaurants, etc., to permit smoking. Within the ranks of serving staff, again assuming for some reason the same percentage of them smoke, there should be enough smokers to willingly work in those establishments. Willing owners, willing staff, and willing customers. Why will the anti-smokers not even consider such a compromise?