Anti-smoking groups frequently make the statement that Second Hand Smoke contains over 4000 chemicals. I have researched this argument using materials provided by the Boone County Coalition for Tobacco Concerns to the Columbia Boone County Board of Health.
Below is a page from the materials the BCCTC provided to the Board of Health regarding chemicals in second hand smoke. At first glance it looks pretty scary with all those chemical names and big numbers.
But what does it really mean? How can a decision maker determine from the page below what the health risks might be and whether those risks warrants implementation of a smoking ban?
There are a number of flaws with this document which makes it of little value as a basis for making a decision.
1. Amount (mg) values 1000 times larger than actual
2. Chemicals are listed with an Amount (mg) of "No Data"
3. There is no context for determining the health risk
4. Federal agency responsible for worker safety decided that Second Hand Smoke should not be regulated
The page above was included in the materials provided by the BCCTC to the Board of Health. The page was scanned and its reproduction on our site is allowed by Copyright Fair Use.
http://www.nycclash.com/main.html
Posted by Bill Hannegan on February 06, 2006 at 04:46 AM CST #
Ok, lets go to all the so-called studies which “prove†ETS is a hazard. There are two kinds of ETS studies… sloppy ones and well executed ones. The sloppy ones are those which are case-controlled. This means, the researcher asks a nonsmoking lung cancer patient what airborne carcinogens he/she was exposed to. If 30% more patients respond to being exposed to lots of smoke, the researcher concludes ETS increases Lung Cancer risk 30%. These studies usually involve a few hundred patients. This is where you get your data from. Trouble is, patients are not experts and do not know if they were exposed to asbestos, lived in a home with a radon problem, etc. The patients have all heard ETS causes LC, so they blame that. Please go to http://kuneman.smokersclub.com/ for a more complete explanation.
The well executed studies are called cohort studies. These rarely conclude ETS causes Lung cancer and Heart Disease. In cohort studies, thousands of persons are enrolled and all are healthy. They are divided among those exposed to smoke..or not. After about 30 years, the researcher contacts as many as he can locate, and determines the health of the study subjects. These are more expensive to run. The most well known of the cohort studies is the UCLA study which found no risk. These kinds of studies are less subject to bias.
The EPA report combined the results of 13 studies, and all but one were case controlled. They could Have used all 58 studies completed at the time, but did not simply becasue if they had, they would have been forced to conclude ETS is safe. According to the EPA report, even using those 13 studies, without the Frontham study, they would have concluded ETS is not dangerous. Trouble with the Frontham study is she refuses to let anyone see her raw data. I have a copy of the complete EPA report—that’s what it says.
In summary, we have the EPA claiming ETS is dangerous, and the Dept of Health and Human Services which only cites studies conducted by antismoking groups, and has never actually done a study of thier own claims ETS is dangerous. We have OSHA, the Congressional research service of the Library of Congress, and OakRidge Nat Labs claiming ETS is not dangerous.
Now, lets move on to population studies. All good epidemiology text books teach than when a weak risk such as a 30% excess risk is determined from epidemiology studies, then the researcher has to conduct population studies to either confirm, or reject the 30% result. If the researcher checks the prevalence of the disease indentified, as being more common in populations, more exposed, then the risk is confirmed. Throuble is, Europeans only get about half as much Lung Cnacer as we do, and they are exposed to more ETS and always were. This according to WHO. And euros smoke about 1/3 more than us, and always did and euros live about 2 years longer than we do. Another population study is that in the US, age-adjusted rates of heart disease, nonsmoker’s lung cancer, asthma, COPD, and days missed from work are higher now than than in the 1970s when we were exposed to about 9 times more smoke. There is also a higher rate of childhood cancer, birth defects, middle ear infections, asthma, and most other diseases blamed on smoke today, than in the 1970s. early cases of smoking related cancer among young adults are increasing.. Again see http://kuneman.smokersclub.com/ for more detailed info. Population studies fail to confirm the 30% increased risk these case-controlled studies claim exist. And it’s more than just a litle odd no matter which disease you’re referring to, the elevated risk caused by ETS is always claimed to be the same- 30%- not double, as Dean claims.
I think the fact that we have removed 90% of all ETS, and nothing good happened, speaks volumes as to what we can expect if we remove the last 10% of ETS exposure. Dave Kuneman
Posted by Bill Hannegan on February 12, 2006 at 11:14 AM CST #