I am sure you did not believe Tony Bliar on weapons of mass destruction, and may I ask you not to believe ZanuLabour on passive smoking. Zanu’s sexed up dossier is the 2004 Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health (SCOTH). If you go to the back of document and look at the citations number 14 and 20. 14 is the World Health Organization’s (WHO) report and 20 is the Enstrom/Kabat report (EK). EK ran for 38 years from 1960 to 1998, involved 118,000 or who 34,000 were partners of smokers. It was peer reviewed by 2 professors of epidemiology and published in the British Medical Journal in 2003, the main conclusions were:

“Conclusions The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed.” And.

“Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, primarily asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema, has been associated with exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, but the evidence for increased mortality is sparse.”

“UK Sunday Telegraph…
Passive Smoking Doesn’t Cause Cancer – Official

Headline: Passive Smoking Doesn’t Cause Cancer – Official
Byline: Victoria MacDonald, Health Correspondent”
Dateline: March 8, 1998

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7398/1057

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/788186/posts

A cancer epidemiologist, who conducted the largest secondhand smoke study ever done, the UCLA Study, completed “too late” to be included Surgeon General Carmona’s 2006 report, wrote a letter, at the request of Keep St. Louis Free, to the St. Louis County Council, that ended with these two paragraphs:”I should say that, personally, I feel strongly that non-smokers should not have to be exposed to cigarette smoke. While the available evidence does not suggest that average exposure to environmental tobacco smoke is an important cause of heart disease or lung cancer in people who do not smoke, cigarette smoke is irritating, can trigger allergic reactions in some people, and can exacerbate asthma and other chronic respiratory conditions. Yet, since the available evidence suggests that the effects of environmental tobacco smoke, particularly for coronary heart disease, are considerably smaller than generally believed, lawmakers may therefore have greater latitude than generally believed to consider the segregation of smokers and nonsmokers and the use of air filtration as adequate and responsible ways to address the health concerns of ETS in workplaces such as bars and restaurants. If it is possible, through segregation of smokers and nonsmokers and the use of air filtration, to reduce all components of environmental tobacco smoke in establishments where smoking is permitted to the level of the air in non-smoking establishments, there is reason to believe that any risk would be undetectable.”

THE AIR ACCORDING TO OSHA

Though repetition has little to do with “the truth,” we’re repeatedly told that there’s “no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke.”

OSHA begs to differ.

OSHA has established PELs (Permissible Exposure Levels) for all the measurable chemicals, including the 40 alleged carcinogens, in secondhand smoke. PELs are levels of exposure for an 8-hour workday from which, according to OSHA, no harm will result.

Of course the idea of “thousands of chemicals” can itself sound spooky. Perhaps it would help to note that coffee contains over 1000 chemicals, 19 of which are known to be rat carcinogens.
-”Rodent Carcinogens: Setting Priorities” Gold Et Al., Science, 258: 261-65 (1992)

There. Feel better?

As for secondhand smoke in the air, OSHA has stated outright that:

“Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)…It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.”
-Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec’y, OSHA, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997

Indeed it would.

Independent health researchers have done the chemistry and the math to prove how very very rare that would be.

As you’re about to see in a moment.

In 1999, comments were solicited by the government from an independent Public and Health Policy Research group, Littlewood & Fennel of Austin, Tx, on the subject of secondhand smoke.

Using EPA figures on the emissions per cigarette of everything measurable in secondhand smoke, they compared them to OSHA’s PELs.

The following excerpt and chart are directly from their report and their Washington testimony:

CALCULATING THE NON-EXISTENT RISKS OF ETS

“We have taken the substances for which measurements have actually been obtained–very few, of course, because it’s difficult to even find these chemicals in diffuse and diluted ETS.

“We posit a sealed, unventilated enclosure that is 20 feet square with a 9 foot ceiling clearance.

“Taking the figures for ETS yields per cigarette directly from the EPA, we calculated the number of cigarettes that would be required to reach the lowest published “danger” threshold for each of these substances. The results are actually quite amusing. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a situation where these threshold limits could be realized.

“Our chart (Table 1) illustrates each of these substances, but let me report some notable examples.

“For Benzo[a]pyrene, 222,000 cigarettes would be required to reach the lowest published “danger” threshold.

“For Acetone, 118,000 cigarettes would be required.

“Toluene would require 50,000 packs of simultaneously smoldering cigarettes.

“At the lower end of the scale– in the case of Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up simultaneously in our little room to reach the threshold at which they might begin to pose a danger.

“For Hydroquinone, “only” 1250 cigarettes are required. Perhaps we could post a notice limiting this 20-foot square room to 300 rather tightly-packed people smoking no more than 62 packs per hour?

“Of course the moment we introduce real world factors to the room — a door, an open window or two, or a healthy level of mechanical air exchange (remember, the room we’ve been talking about is sealed) achieving these levels becomes even more implausible.

“It becomes increasingly clear to us that ETS is a political, rather than scientific, scapegoat.”

Chart (Table 1)

-”Toxic Toxicology” Littlewood & Fennel

Coming at OSHA from quite a different angle is litigator (and how!) John Banzhaf, founder and president of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

Banzhaf is on record as wanting to remove healthy children from intact homes if one of their family smokes. He also favors national smoking bans both indoors and out throughout America, and has litigation kits for sale on how to get your landlord to evict your smoking neighbors.

Banzhaf originally wanted OSHA to ban smoking in all American workplaces.

It’s not even that OSHA wasn’t happy to play along; it’s just that–darn it — they couldn’t find the real-world science to make it credible.

So Banzhaf sued them. Suing federal agencies to get them to do what you want is, alas, a new trick in the political deck of cards. But OSHA, at least apparently, hung tough.

In response to Banzhaf’s law suit they said the best they could do would be to set some official standards for permissible levels of smoking in the workplace.

Scaring Banzhaf, and Glantz and the rest of them to death.

Permissible levels? No, no. That would mean that OSHA, officially, said that smoking was permitted. That in fact, there were levels (hard to exceed, as we hope we’ve already shown) that were generally safe.

This so frightened Banzhaf that he dropped the case. Here are excerpts from his press release:

“ASH has agreed to dismiss its lawsuit against OSHA…to avoid serious harm to the non-smokers rights movement from adverse action OSHA had threatened to take if forced by the suit to do it….developing some hypothetical [ASH's characterization] measurement of smoke pollution that might be a better remedy than prohibiting smoking….[T]his could seriously hurt efforts to pass non-smokers’ rights legislation at the state and local level…

Another major threat was that, if the agency were forced by ASH’s suit to promulgate a rule regulating workplace smoking, [it] would be likely to pass a weak one…. This weak rule in turn could preempt future and possibly even existing non-smokers rights laws– a risk no one was willing to take.

As a result of ASH’s dismissal of the suit, OSHA will now withdraw its rule-making proceedings but will do so without using any of the damaging [to Anti activists] language they had threatened to include.”
-ASH Nixes OSHA Suit To Prevent Harm To Movement

Looking on the bright side, Banzhaf concludes:

“We might now be even more successful in persuading states and localities to ban smoking on their own, once they no longer have OSHA rule-making to hide behind.”

Once again, the Anti-Smoking Movement reveals that it’s true motive is basically Prohibition (stopping smokers from smoking; making them “social outcasts”) –not “safe air.”

And the attitude seems to be, as Stanton Glantz says, if the science doesn’t “help” you, don’t do the science.

@ LFATI am not making smokers’ lives less pleasant at all.

Surely the smoker decides that and not you?

@ LFATI am merely asking them not to infringe on my liberty when they smoke.

And I am merely asking you to respect the liberty of the person who owns the property you’re sitting in. Is it reasonable to expect them to be compelled by law to provide you with an environment you arbitrarily define as pleasant?

@ LFATThere are plenty of places for people to smoke without infringeing on this, such as their homes and indeed open spaces such as parks. However, choosing to smoke in a place where other people are adversely affected is unacceptable.

Why is it unacceptable? Why is this argument any different from me demanding specific types of music to be banned from being played in public? I don’t like it, it makes my evening less pleasant, thus infringing on my liberty, thus a ban is justified?

@ LFATJulia, I agree that Labour will take an inch if you suggest that there might be a mile available. That said, even as a non-smoker I think Bloomberg would be an idiot to pursue this.

But it is the natural extension of your own logic. You even question the health benefits, leaving us purely with people’s whims. i.e. some people find it objectionable thus it’s reasonable to ban it from places where there’s people.
Why make any distinction between indoors and outdoors? Between the bar or the beer garden, or indeed the pub or the park? If people don’t like being near a smoker in the pub they’re not going to like being near him in the park either.

Also from Breast Cancer UK:
http://www.nomorebreastcancer.org.uk/news_4.12.08.html

And the EU:
http://www.nomorebreastcancer.org.uk/news_14.4.08.html

And from the US:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-08/acs-nda072308.php

No. It’s just a claim that’s been repeated over and over again.

The very first UK study, the London Hospitals study by Doll and Hill in 1950, 99% of lung cancer patients were smokers. Case closed? Not at all. 98% of all the patients in both the control and study group were smokers. In a population in which 98% of people are smokers, one can expect 98% of lung cancers (or any other disease) to be found among smokers.

The study proved nothing at all. But it convinced Richard Doll that smoking caused lung cancer. And it convinced many other doctors as well. All they could see was that 99% of lung cancer patients were smokers.

Unless there’s a very strong wind.

To accommodate everyone in comfort and without having to endure things they don’t like is a right. To enjoy a legal (highly taxed) product in comfort may or may not be considered a right by some, but a property and business owner should to have the right to say what is permissible on their premises.

As Ian pointed out earlier, if you go to a party you will generally know whether that person will be allowing smoking or not (or you could ask at least) and then make a decision as to whether you wish to attend. It’s perfectly fair and reasonable.

As for smoking on the beach, if you’re there first you could mention this politely and the majority will happily oblige and find a different spot. If you arrive after them however, then you make the choice of whether or not to sit whilst in full possession of the knowledge that you may be subjected to the smoke. But please also try to bear in mind that smoke outdoors diffuses so rapidly that you’d practically have to be snogging someone to get it anywhere near you.

And why is this?

Because they aren’t allowed to smoke indoors and use the ashtrays formerly provided for this!

Sheesh!

Read your response to my post, the one you did at 3:55, where you responded to me pointing out the hole in your argument. The one where you decided to respond like a stroppy teenager.

Then you’ll see where this veered off, and where you went from Mr Rational to Mr Snotty – I just respond in kind.

However, it has had an effect on my health and although I think it is too draconian in its implimentation, I think some form of restriction for smoking has some merits. I don’t smoke, but as a musician, I used to wake up with hangover type headaches after gigs without drinking anything stronger than coke, and I don’t anymore. I can only put this down to smoke. I no longer lose my voice either, (and it ain’t because I’m a better singer than I was two years ago either).

Despite this, I don’t see that banning smoking altogether was the correct move. Provision should have been made as in Holland for smoking and non smoking partitions in bars. Smokers should not be forced out into the rain to have a fag, it’s draconian and pointless. Banning smoking in public areas would be just as ludicrous. If fag butts are the issue, and I can see that that is a problem as I have young children and I do see a lot of this in childrens play areas and the like, INSTALL MORE RECEPTICLES, and fine people for littering.