Published: April 11, 2008 10:15 pm      

Reader provides his insight into environmental tobacco smoke

I stopped smoking cigarettes several years ago; I seldom go into bars anymore or eat out. So I never intended to write a letter about the smoking ban the Legislature is considering because of exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke until I read the statements put out by a few of our legislators.

I retired from the safety and health profession after almost 18 years in 1988, but I have followed the science and pseudo-science studies of ETS from their beginning.

During the debate over the ban, Dr. David Hartsuch was right to challenge the health claims made by anti-smoking groups. They and government groups have spent tens of millions of dollars for studies to further their agenda of banning smoking worldwide. Lawsuits? I don’t think so. If ETS is so dangerous that it causes cancer, heart disease and numerous other diseases, and kills 50,000 people a year, has anybody heard of a class-action suit based on ETS causing heart disease or cancer? Why hasn’t the federal government banned smoking? Because scientific research has not found ETAs a significant health risk. The EPA tried to get the power to ban smoking some years ago by manipulating the data from previous studies to classify ETS as a Category 1 Carcinogen. The EPA was taken to court and lost.

The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) does not list ETS as a hazardous airborne substance employees are exposed to, or ban smoking in workplaces. Eighty million people a year die from almost 200 infections they get in hospitals due to lack of cleanliness and medical people, surgeons on down, not washing their hands. The corner tavern is safer for a person’s mortality than the local hospital. A recent study concludes that limiting consumption of salt could save 150,000 lives a year. Let’s ban salt from all restaurants and fast foods.

A 2005 Gallup Poll found that 40 percent of Americans supported setting aside non-smoking areas in bars, 29 percent said smoking should be totally banned in them, and 28 percent said there should be no smoking restrictions. If only less than 30 percent of the population support bans, why are states and cities passing these bans? Well, tobacco haters can also be making law, without weighing all the likely results. USA Today, Friday, March 7, had a news article of interest. Revenue declined 30 percent after Minnesota passed a no smoking ban and right through ice fishing season, a tourist attraction (revenue had also declined in New York City because of the ban). Bartenders and waitresses had to be laid off. Some bars closed on Monday. Business owners are starting a statewide protest. A disabled veteran has joined because the VFW and other military clubs are losing business. These are people who lost limbs and the risk of death because they thought that they were fighting wars to protect a free country. Now they can’t smoke a cigarette in their own clubs?

Here are the results from two studies out of hundreds conducted worldwide. Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society started a study and collaborated with the authors of a 1999 Environmental Health Perspective survey of 17 ETS heart disease studies. Only five cases of heart disease were found that were statistically significantly positive. The lead author was Michael Thun! It appears this has not seeped down to his staff and volunteers supporting smoking bans.

The UCLA study is the longest running study yet, a 39-year study of 35,562 Californians who had never smoked, and included spouses. Professor James Easton of UCLA and Professor Geoffrey of the University of New York, Stony Brook, did it. It was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), one of the world’s most respected medical journals in June 2003.

The study showed no “casual relationship between exposure to ETS and tobacco-related mortality.”

Within four months there were over 140 responses on BMJ’s website. Some demanded retraction. One wanted all use of statistics in science used for such wicked purposes (smoking is a sin) banned. Almost all the criticism was personal attacks and slurs. If stoning were still a practice these two scientists would be scarred for life. None of the responses were scientific criticism of the study.

Someone in the legislature remarked that ETS in casinos was the same as smoking four packs of cigarettes a day. I don’t know where she got this figure, but to some people, gambling is also a sin. A New England Journal of Medicine study found that exposure to ETS smoke puffed into your face was equally to merely 0.004 cigarettes an hour. Automobile smog in Southern California, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Denver are equivalent to smoking four packs a day.

Are we going to believe Political Correctness and Junk Science (if you want to know what that is, there are 32 books listed on Amazon.com and some in our local library), or the most respected medical journals in the world on the hazards of ETS?

Allen Stowell,

Clinton