Reply #273: You have officially jumped the couch. The American College of Chest Physic [View All]

[Czolgosz]

* The American College of Chest Physicians concluded "A great deal of new evidence suggests that the respiratory system may be vulnerable to damage caused by inhaled environmental agents during the prenatal period," said Rachel L. Miller, MD, the study's lead author at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health, part of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY. "This study indicates that the combination of exposure to combustion by-products in the womb and to second-hand smoke during infancy can cause significantly more respiratory problems than either exposure on its own," added Dr. Frederica Perera, the study's Principal Investigator and Director of the Center.

* The EPA has also concluded Secondhand Smoke Can Make Children Suffer Serious Health Risks. Breathing secondhand smoke can be harmful to children's health including asthma, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), bronchitis and pneumonia and ear infections. Children's exposure to secondhand smoke is responsible for: (1) increases in the number of asthma attacks and severity of symptoms in 200,000 to 1 million children with asthma; (2) between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections (for children under 18 months of age); and, (3) respiratory tract infections resulting in 7,500 to 15,000 hospitalizations each year. The developing lungs of young children are severely affected by exposure to secondhand smoke for several reasons including that children are still developing physically, have higher breathing rates than adults, and have little control over their indoor environments. Children receiving high doses of secondhand smoke, such as those with smoking mothers, run the greatest risk of damaging health effects. A few basic actions can protect children from secondhand smoke: (1) Choose not to smoke in your home and car and do not allow family and visitors to do so. Infants and toddlers are especially vulnerable to the health risks from secondhand smoke, (2) Do not allow childcare providers or others who work in your home to smoke, (3) Until you can quit, choose to smoke outside. Moving to another room or opening a window is not enough to protect your children.

* The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that the risk of acute myocardial infarction and coronary heart disease associated with exposure to tobacco smoke is non-linear at low doses, increasing rapidly with relatively small doses such as those received from secondhand smoke (SHS) or actively smoking one or two cigarettes a day, and has warned that all patients at increased risk of coronary heart disease or with known coronary artery disease should avoid all indoor environments that permit smoking.

* A study of hospital admissions for acute myocardial infarction in Helena, Montana before, during, and after a local law eliminating smoking in workplaces and public places was in effect, has determined that laws to enforce smokefree workplaces and public places may be associated with a reduction in morbidity from heart disease.

* The 1999 National Cancer Institute Monograph 10, based on the 1997 Cal-EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) review of population-based studies, confirmed that SHS is fatal and has numerous non-fatal health effects. SHS chemicals include irritants and systemic toxicants, mutagens, and carcinogens, and reproductive and developmental toxicants. More than 50 compounds in tobacco smoke are known carcinogens. SHS exposure causes lung and nasal sinus cancer, heart disease, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Serious impacts of SHS on children include asthma induction and exacerbation, bronchitis and pneumonia, middle ear infection, chronic respiratory symptoms, and low birth weight.

* SHS is the third leading cause of preventable death in this country, killing 53,000 nonsmokers in the U.S. each year. For every eight smokers the tobacco industry kills, it takes one nonsmoker with them.

* SHS is a major source of PM pollution - a risk factor for pulmonary disease, asthma, and lung cancer - and that three cigarettes smouldering in a room emits up to 10-fold more PM pollution than an ecodiesel engine. The study concluded that high levels of PM exposure from SHS may account for frequent episodes of short term respiratory damage in nonsmokers.

* Secondhand smoke exposure during childhood has been associated with an increased risk of spinal pain, such as neck pain and back pain in adult life. Researchers suggest this may be due to the negative effects of smoke exposure during childhood on the developing spine.

* The excess risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) associated with passive smoking is 50-60%, twice what was previously thought by researchers, and the risks of CHD for passive smoking are virtually indistinguishable from active smoking. A study published in the July 2004 edition of the British Medical Journal found higher risks of CHD because, rather than using marriage to a smoker or working in a smoky environment as their measure of exposure, the study's authors used plasma cotinine (metabolized nicotine), a direct biochemical measure of total SHS)exposure. By doing so, they captured SHS's entire exposure effect.

* Even a half hour of secondhand smoke exposure causes heart damage similar to that of habitual smokers. Nonsmokers' heart arteries showed a reduced ability to dilate, diminishing the ability of the heart to get life-giving blood. In addition, the same half hour of secondhand smoke exposure activates blood platelets, which can initiate the process of atherosclerosis (blockage of the heart's arteries) that leads to heart attacks. These effects explain other research showing that nonsmokers regularly exposed to SHS suffer death or morbidity rates 30% higher than those of unexposed nonsmokers.

* The 1986 Report of the Surgeon General; the 1986 National Research Council report, Environmental Tobacco Smoke: Measuring Exposures and Assessing Health Effects; and the 1992 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report, Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other Disorders, established that SHS exposure causes lung cancer.

* The 2002 Environmental Health Information Service's 10th Report on Carcinogens classifies SHS as a Group A (Human) Carcinogen - a substance known to cause cancer in humans. There is no safe level of exposure for Group A toxins. In addition, the 2002 World Health Organization International Agency's (IARC) Monograph on Tobacco Smoking, both Active and Passive concluded that nonsmokers are exposed to the same carcinogens as active smokers.

* In 1991, data showed that nearly 90 percent of the U.S. population had measurable levels of serum cotinine in their blood. In 2002, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals found more than a 75 percent decrease in median cotinine levels for nonsmokers in the U.S. since 1991- an indication that smoke-free environments significantly reduce exposure to SHS.

Here's a site with the references: <http://www.no-smoke.org/htmlpage.php?id=17>

THERE IS A SUCH A SUPERABUNDANCE OF LITERATURE TO CONFIRM SECONDHAND SMOKE IS A HEALTH RISK THAT ONLY AN ADDICT WOULD SUGGEST OTHERWISE.

Also, your argument that "customers and staff alike can choose which they wish to patronize/work in" is morally bankrupt if you mean it seriously. It is true that customers have some freedom to chose what establishment they patronize except when they are minors, or when they are with a large group and have no alternative transportation, or when they are at a work related function, or when . . . . Your suggestion that staff at those restaurants could just "choose" a different place to work is what is morally bankrupt. To illustrate, let's try your argument in some other contexts: "those miners' families should quit whining about the poor safety record at the mine -- the miners could have chosen a different place to work;" or "that secretary who keeps bitching about getting her ass pinched should quit whining -- she could just chose a different job;" or "Scott McClellan should quit bitching to his mother (who just abandoned the Republican party in her bid for Texas governor) about having to spread Bush's increasingly obvious lies -- he could just chose another job" (actually, that last one was a joke). Maybe you have never faced the choice between supporting your kids in a less than ideal job, but other workers DO NOT enjoy the luxury of simply "choosing" another job. Did you really think the underpaid waitresses and busboys in those smoky establishments "chose" those jobs from a wide panoply of options, and they freely elected to work for minimum (or sub-minimum) wages to bring you food and clean up your dirty dishes after you are done because they didn't want the stress of running a Fortune 500 company? Simply put, the exposure to unhealthy or unsafe or hostile work environments is not a choice that the worker should be blamed for, and you should be ashamed for imposing blame and responsibility for the inadequacies of the workplace on the workers who have to tolerate that workplace.

Finally, I am recovering from stage IV nasopharyngeal cancer. The only risk factor I have is that both my parents were heavy lifelong smokers (until my father was diagnosed with smoking-related bladder cancer). My oncologists at MD Anderson believe there is an indisputable link between secondhand smoke and cancer, asthma, emphysema, SIDS, bronchitis, pneumonia, an a panoply of other diseases. You may think that they are just "busybodies" but I trust you'll forgive me if I take their analysis of the health risk over yours.