State deems second-hand smoke 'toxic' (California)

[RamboLiberal]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/26/MNGOHGTJ337.DTL

California regulators became the first in the nation today to designate second-hand tobacco smoke as a "toxic air contaminant,'' placing it in the same category as the poisons arsenic and benzene.

The state Air Resources Board decided to target environmental tobacco smoke after evaluating studies that linked other people's smoke to increased cases of breast cancer, heart disease, asthma and low birth-weight babies.

The designation will trigger investigations around the state. Air board staffers are expected to visit clusters of smokers outside buildings and other spots where smokers congregate. They want to figure out ways to reduce the toxic exposure to unsuspecting passers-by.

One tough challenge will be developing an education campaign geared toward protecting children in homes and cars from smoking parents and other family members, board representatives said.

[enid602]

1. Calif

Too bad they don't show the same concern for other forms of air pollution.

[Sandpiper]

2. More toxic, than say, the air in Los Angeles?

More crapola from the personal control crowd.

Before long it will be illegal to smoke in your car or your home.

And California will still have some of the filthiest air in the US.

[Journeyman]

3. When I smoked I told people I did it to filter LA air. . .

'cause no matter how much I smoked nor how small the room, there was never a grey/brown pall suspended in the air such as hangs here in the Basin.

[anitar1]

31. One reason I moved fron LA t o Oregon in the 80's.

Jebus! Smoking worse than air pollution? Who is trying to make us focus on other matters and why?

[SurfRidem]

4. Air Resources Board...?

No wonder California's budget is in the red.

[RamboLiberal]

5. More on the ruling - they are linking it to breast cancer

California regulators ruled Thursday that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer in younger women, an unprecedented finding that could lead to tougher anti-smoking measures.

The state's powerful Air Resources Board, known nationally for ground-breaking rules limiting auto and diesel pollution, unanimously approved a 1,200-page report from state Environmental Protection Agency scientists that is the strongest indictment yet of secondhand smoke.

CalEPA's finding challenges conventional scientific thinking because most studies, until recently, had not even found a connection between female smokers and breast cancer.

"I think that if we don't embrace these new conclusions we're doing a disservice to younger women," says Andrew Hyland, a research scientist at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo. "My prediction is that in the months to come, people will see the evidence and change their opinion."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-26-secondhand-smoke_x.htm

[Longhorn]

13. That wouldn't surprise me at all.

My mother-in-law died of breast cancer in 1984 at the age of 49. She never smoked and she watched her diet and health like a hawk but her husband, mother, father, and brother all smoked. One case doesn't prove anything, of course.

[anotherdrew]

6. this is bullshit - these "studies" are half-assed prove nothing BS

these people just want to further their jihad against personal choice.

any way they can find to control you. when will it ever stop?

[merwin]

7. You breathe in toxic chemicals and then breath them out, there's no

way that anyone near you is avoiding breathing in toxic chemicals as well.

Formaldehyde, ammonia, acetone, ethanol, ARSENIC, DDT, Methanol, Methane, etc are all toxic chemicals found in cigarettes.

[Diane R]

9. Apparently you don't have asthma,

and didn't grow up with a parent who smoked four packs of cigarettes a day.Good for California. Hope the other states catch up.

If you want to smoke, fine. Just go far away out into a field all by yourself and smoke until you have to walk around with those two little tubes stuffed up your nose.

[AtomicKitten]

27. ditto

[burrowowl]

8. CA's second-hand smoke

from coal burning plants in New Mexico sending electricity to California is doing us in.
I just love the hypocracy of CA, no polluting plants in our state, however, CA imports electricity form other states that pay the pollution price.
I am angry with NM as well, 15 sq kilometers of photovoltaic cells would provide all the NM's energy needs. The Native Americans are angry since new permission is being given to mine coal around Farmington to feed plant to send electricity to CA (some stays here in NM) AND we can't eat fish fished here, because guess why (has to do with mercury ...).

[Jdubb32]

10. smokers 25ft. from Los Angeles city lines

[Sadie5]

11. You expect us to believe this

Formaldehyde, ammonia, acetone, ethanol, ARSENIC, DDT, Methanol, Methane, etc are all toxic chemicals found in cigarettes. Proof please???

[Daphne08]

12. Why can't reasonable Democrats see that this kind

of crap has "facilitated" the movement of this country rightward?

I've been a Democrat all my life, but this just chaps my hide! I'm sick and tired of people trying to tell me what I can and can not do! I just may leave California if they push this crap on us.

[Mechatanketra]

14. Why can't smokers see that this isn't a freaking privacy issue?

I'm sick and tired of listening to kneejerk libertarians thumping their chests about "it's my body" and whatnot. It's smoke, people. If you just wanted to OD on nicotine gum for the buzz, virtually nobody would care (certainly not enough to make a public movement of it). But when you light a cigarette, everyone in the room is basically smoking with you; you are the one trying to force people to do what they don't want to.

It's the smoker, not the complaining nonsmoker, who's crossed Oliver Holmes's "inch in front of my face" line. If you want to make it a privacy issue, figure out how to make tobacco brownies.

[Codeine]

16. Well said!

:headbang: :yourock: :applause: :woohoo:

I'm always amazed by the logical contortions that addiction will cause a person to make.

[progdonkey]

17. right on!

If someone wants to eat a Big Mac near me or my (hypothetical) children, they can go ahead and do it. It's their arteries they're clogging with that crap.

But if that Big Mac released "fat smoke" into the air that resulted in my arteries getting clogged as well, I'd have every right to demand for the man to stop eating!

Personally, I do find the "no smoking in bars" thing pretty stupid, since you kind of expect that, and if you don't like it, you can go to another bar or, if there are enough of you, you can demand the bar ownership ban smoking in their own bar, but to have the government demand that every bar--even ones where none of the customers would mind or where the customers are all smokers themselves--ban smoking crosses the line for me.

But if I'm sitting in a public park with my pregnant wife or child (or even just alone), and someone sits down up-wind and starts smoking, I have every right to demand he stop smoking or move somewhere else to do it, and if he doesn't, I'd have no problem seeing him arrested for being a nuisance.

A person has the right to harm himself all he wants and it's not my business, but once it starts affecting me or the general public, it's my business.

[Mechatanketra]

18. Just one thing ...

Personally, I do find the "no smoking in bars" thing pretty stupid, since you kind of expect that, and if you don't like it, you can go to another bar or, if there are enough of you, you can demand the bar ownership ban smoking in their own bar, but to have the government demand that every bar--even ones where none of the customers would mind or where the customers are all smokers themselves--ban smoking crosses the line for me.

It's not just about the customers -- the waitstaff has to breathe that too, for hours at a crack, and they don't get the choice of a nonsmoking section. And while I'm sure the kneejerk libertarian response would be "then they can just get a job somewhere else!", that line of thinking comes straight from the fantasy world where people are free to not work period without harm. (If people didn't need money to stay alive, the free market might actually work the way its evangelists imagine it does.) So I'm reticent to bloodlessly dismiss that concern as a matter of personal choice too.

[progdonkey]

30. damn...

"the waitstaff has to breathe that too"

Okay, you got me; that hadn't even crossed my mind. :dunce:

Which is actually being worse than the "free market evangelists" since they'd at least make excuses for exposing the waitstaff to all that smoke, whereas I didn't even consider them.

I think I was just coming from the viewpoint of being as easy on people as possible; thinking, "hey, smokers, we'll leave you the bars. I don't really expect a bar to be a health club, anyway!" which is ironic considering the other part of my post is so intolerant of smokers! Definitely, the right for any employees of the bar to work in non-polluted air far supercedes any possible claim that a smoking customer could make.

I completely admit I was wrong. :pals:

[Sandpiper]

19. You have no problem with smokers being arrested

Wow.

How bout a few clubs with a night stick just for good measure?

[progdonkey]

33. I wouldn't cry over it...

One citizen's right to breathe clean air far outweighs another citizen's right to nurse an addiction.

If a smoker's been warned that he's encroaching upon a non-smoker's right not to breathe that shit, and he continues to do it, he's being a nuisance.

And as far as the implication that that's being a blackshirt, we're not talking about calling the police (which is already quite different from "a few clubs and a night stick") on someone because he's a black guy hanging around with a bunch of white girls and it pisses some racist off; we're talking about one person exposing another to a proven carcinogen and toxin (and even if you don't buy that, the air quality at the very least is substantially reduced, which could easily provoke an asthma attack). And it's not a nuisance like someone sitting next to you who won't stop cracking his knuckles; that's merely annoying (though, if he keeps doing it after you ask him to stop, and he's being an ass about it...). A smoker, on the other hand, is actively harming the health and ruining the air of those around him with the first puff.

Yes, somewhere like LA already has shit air, but that's like saying pissing on a subway platform is perfectly A-Okay since it already smells; I will give you, though, that it seems strange to focus on smoking when an old truck releases more filth into the air a minute than probably a hundred cigarettes, but that doesn't mean any concerns about smoking or any legislation to control it are without merit and should be dismissed. Reducing the number of places non-smokers are exposed to smoke is a good thing; a better thing might very well be reducing the number of old vehicles on the road, but that doesn't detract in the least from the correctness of the former.

[LeftyMom]

15. As somebody with asthma caused by living with smokers as a teen

Don't let the door hit you on your way out! :hi:

If you think your perceived right to smoke outweighs somebody else's right to draw a clear breath, you really need to reevaluate your priorities.

[Sandpiper]

20. Considering California has the filthiest air in the US

For reasons wholly unrelated to cigarette smoking, and would still have the filthiest air in the US if everyone stopped smoking cigarrettes tomorrow, this all seems like so much more jagoff anti smoking hysteria.


But, I guess the next time an 18 wheeler from Mexico belches out a black plume of diesel exhaust, we can all breathe a sigh of relief (between coughs) that it least it isn't the demon tobacco smoke.

:eyes:

[LeftyMom]

21. But why add to it for no good reason?

I don't have to breathe in the median on I-80, but smokers seem to think they have the right to pullute the air places I would like to be (parks, outdoor shopping areas, etc. ) Thier right to poison themselves in the manner of thier choosing doesn't exend to a right to poison me. If you want to enjoy tobacco anywhere you go, go get a can of skoal. It's nasty, but it doesn't do anybody else any harm.

[High Plains]

23. Okay, where are we headed here: A total ban on smoking

anywhere except in the privacy of one's home?

What if you have kids? No smoking at home with kids?

The logic behind these anti-smoking measures seems to be leading inexorably toward an effort to ban cigarette smoking. Period. Are we up for that? Is California ready for a new round of jail and prison construction? Have you finished paying for your last one?

[anitar1]

32. You have evidently sipped the kool ade.

Why in the world would you think that all pollution is caused by smokers? I am not a smoker , but I do not believe that smoking is the primne cause of pollution. I think you need to do some research and have your IQ tested.

[Beaverhausen]

22. Actually I think CA has very strict air pollution standards

I know we have stricter standards for car exhaust.

Are you sure CA has the worst air? I thought Texas had that honor.

[High Plains]

24. Then why is the LA air always such a lovely yellow color?

[Beaverhausen]

25. Not today!

[AtomicKitten]

28. ditto

[moriverrat]

26. It sickens me that that this kind of stuff is blamed on progressives

The way it is projected by the Pharma/Medical cartel funded media, and their P.R.opaganda industry, which includes nonprofit front groups.

[moriverrat]

29. Boycott Johnson & Johnson

http://boycottjohnsonandjohnson.blogspot.com/

Johnson & Johnson company thru its sister organization Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has been unfairly influencing local governments to enact smoking bans simply to prop up sales of pharmaceutical nicotine products like Nicotrol, Nicoderm, Nicoderm CQ patches.....

http://boycottjohnsonandjohnson.blogspot.com/