| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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Too much is made of the 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke. We're told these chemicals are so harmful that they are responsible for the deaths of millions worldwide. Untold in this "war on tobacco" is that each of the plants we consume consists of an equally daunting thousands of chemicals many of which are recognized poisons or suspected cancer-causing agents. Cayenne peppers, carrots and strawberries each contain six suspected carcinogens; onions, grapefruit and tomato each contain five -- some the same as the seven suspected carcinogens found in tobacco. High-heat cooking creates yet more dietary carcinogens from otherwise harmless chemical constituents. Sure, these plant chemicals are measured in infinitesimal amounts. An independent study calculated 222,000 smoking cigarettes would be needed to reach unacceptable levels of benzo(a)pyrene. One million smoking cigarettes would be needed to produce unacceptable levels of toluene. To reach these estimated danger levels, the cigarettes must be smoked simultaneously and completely in a sealed 20-square-foot room with a nine-foot ceiling. Many other chemicals in tobacco smoke can also be found in normal diets. Smoking 3,000 packages of cigarettes would supply the same amount of arsenic as a nutritious 200 gram serving of sole. Half a bottle of now healthy wine can supply 32 times the amount of lead as one pack of cigarettes. The same amount of cadmium obtained from smoking eight packs of cigarettes can be enjoyed in half a pound of crab. That's one problem with the anti-smoking crusade. The risks of smoking are greatly exaggerated. So are the costs. An in-depth analysis of 400,000 U.S. smoking-related deaths by National Institute of Health mathematician Rosalind Marimont and senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute Robert Levy identified a disturbing number of flaws in the methodology used to estimate these deaths. Incorrectly classifying some diseases as smoking-related and choosing the wrong standard of comparison each overstated deaths by more than 65 per cent. Failure to control for confounding variables such as diet and exercise turned estimates more into a computerized shell game than reliable estimates of deaths. Marimont and Levy also found no adjustments were made to the costs of smoking resulting from the benefits of smoking -- reduced Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, less obesity, depression and breast cancer. If it were possible to estimate 45,000 smoking-related Canadian deaths as some health activists imagine -- and Marimont, Levy and other respected researchers think it is not -- then applying an identical methodology to other lifestyle choices would yield 57,000 Canadian deaths due to lack of exercise and 73,000 Canadian deaths blamed on poor diets. If both the chemical constituents of tobacco smoke and the numbers of smoking-related deaths are overstated -- and clearly they are -- how can we trust the claim that tobacco smoke is harmful to non-smokers? The 1993 bellwether study by the Environmental Protection Agency that selectively combined the results of a number of previous studies and found a small increase in lung cancer risk in those exposed to environmental tobacco smoke has been roundly criticized as severely flawed by fellow researchers and ultimately found invalid in a court of law. In 1998, the World Health Organization reported a small, but not statistically significant, increase in the risk of lung cancer in non-smoking women married to smokers. Despite these invalidating deficiencies, the Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization both concluded tobacco smoke causes lung cancer in non-smokers. One wonders whether the same conclusions would have been announced if scientific fraud were a criminal offence. When confronted with the scientific uncertainty, the inconsistency of results and the incredible misrepresentation of present-day knowledge, those seeking to abolish tobacco invoke a radical interpretation of the Precautionary Principle: "Where potential adverse effects are not fully understood, the activity should not proceed." This unreasonable exploitation of the ever-present risks of living infiltrates our schools to indoctrinate trusting and eager minds with the irrational fears of today. Instead of opening minds to the wondrous complexities of living, it opens the door to peer ridicule and intolerance while cultivating the trendy cynics of tomorrow. If we continue down this dangerous path of control and prohibition based on an unreliable or remote chance of harm, how many personal freedoms will remain seven generations from now? |
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i just got a free carton of American Sprit smokes in the mail, by sending them $4.20 in shipping & handling and filling out their silly survey. (Suspect dollar amount right?) |
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I'm using this absurd example, because ALL of the other examples in the available scientific literature are equally absurd. The second-hand smoke scare is a political farce. It was invented in the mid-1990s by the Clinton administration -- it has Hillary's hands all over it -- because anti-smoking radicals, who tend to be like anti-abortion radicals in their zealous devotion to the cause, actually convinced the Environmental Protection Agency to change its "conventional standard for statistical significance" so that second-hand smoke could be proven to be a killer. Normally nobody but specialists would care -- substandard scientific reports get released all the time -- except that it's now being used to justify anti-smoking legislation that, in the case of New York City, could result in smokers not even being able to light up in their own clubs, their own bars, and, in one case, their own apartment buildings -- even if the place is clearly marked as a smoking establishment. If Mayor Michael Bloomberg gets his way, they won't even be able to smoke in smoking lounges, cigar bars or tobacco shops. Wouldn't the American way be to put a big sign on the front of your restaurant? "People Smoke In Here -- Don't Come In If It Bugs You." And then let everyone act like grownups? The simple fact of the matter is that by about 1990 everyone had reached a compromise on this issue. Smokers would sit in smoking sections. Ventilation systems would be installed in public buildings. Everyone would live and let live. Not good enough for the smoke-haters. They knew that arguing against a legal substance on the basis that it was hurting the people who LIKED IT was a losing battle, and un-American besides. But if they could somehow prove that innocent people were dying ... And so they proved it with "junk science." The Bush administration recently rejected a scientific report, 30 years in the making, signed by some of the top researchers in the world that said fossil fuels were the principle cause of global warming in the form of air pollution. The reason Bush rejected the findings: it was "junk science" from "the bureaucracy." If that was junk science, then the second-hand smoke research comes from a junkyard infested with giant rats and scavenging stray dogs. Most of the available studies have "confidence intervals" right around 1.0 -- which means no confidence at all. And almost all of them fail to take into account the other sources of air pollution. It's as though our polluted air were made up of 140 parts car exhaust, 70 parts smoke from fossil-fuel-burning factories, 40 parts methane, and .0000001 parts smoke from that guy on the corner sneaking a cigarette on his lunch hour. So what do we do? KILL THE SMOKER. HE'S DESTROYING THE AIR. The fact is, there have been 40 epidemiological studies of second-hand smoke, almost all of them based on the experience of non-smokers married to smokers. Thirty-two of them found no evidence of second-hand smoke causing any disease at all. The other eight showed "weak association" -- but in some of the studies there was actually a NEGATIVE result, indicating that non-smoking spouses of smokers are LESS likely to get a serious disease. Of course, the ones that showed a negative result were thrown out as wacky, but the others are equally wacky. For one thing, they're all infected with what science calls "recall bias." People interviewed are asked to reconstruct smoking patterns over their entire lifetimes, and it's been shown time and again that their memories are faulty, and in many cases, designed to mislead. The non-smoker frequently turns out to be a smoker for a portion of those years; he changes his story for insurance reasons or because of pending litigation. And the non-smoker with lung cancer tends to seek external causes and fasten on the most convenient one, even when we know that a person living in an urban area is subject to multiple possible causes of lung cancer, most of them far more potent than cigarette smoke. Complicating the issue is the media treatment of second-hand smoke. If you say something often enough, it acquires the patina of truth even if the original basis for it is phony. I could use dozens of examples, but I'll just use the most recent one that I know of. Here's the lead paragraph from a July 12 article in the Globe and Mail, the Canadian newspaper: "People who are routinely exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke, such as workers in bars and restaurants, can see their risk of lung cancer triple, a new study says. The Canadian study provides some of the most compelling scientific evidence yet for a total ban on workplace smoking, including bars and restaurants." Okay, now let's look at the study the article was based on. It was published in the International Journal of Cancer and signed by a lead researcher for Health Canada -- a government agency with a vested interest. (Public health agency research tends to be uniformly alarmist.) Even so, the Globe and Mail's report leaves out the most important conclusion in the study: "Although more years of and more intense residential passive smoke exposure tended to be associated with higher risk estimates, no clear dose-response relationship was evident." Any particular reason this would be left out? Other than that it's inconvenient? Of course, to report the data without any agency spin on it, you would need to study the tables, evaluate the "confidence intervals," allow for "recall bias," and do all the other things scientists normally do, and journalists SHOULD do. Apparently Australian journalists are a little more diligent. When the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council released a second-hand smoke report in 1997, the authors decided to omit the statistical tables entirely because they feared the press might study them. An outraged judge eventually censured the government agency for what he called lying by omission -- the same thing that happened in a North Carolina court case, when a judge said the Environmental Protection Agency's report was rife with "cherry picking" of statistics, and had excluded half the available studies for no good reason. Later the Congressional Research Service issued a blistering report of its own, essentially calling the EPA study irresponsible and alarmist. The reason the issue of second-hand smoke is such a raging issue right now is that it's being used as the rationale for additional anti-smoking laws. Waiters, bartenders and cooks need to be protected. This is what Bloomberg is basing his whole campaign on. People might not LIKE smoke. They might find it unpleasant. But it's a huge jump to say it's actually harming their bodies, as though they were coal miners, soon to be diagnosed with Black Lung Disease. In fact, we have two studies that measured Environmental Tobacco Smoke -- the scientific name for it -- and came to the conclusion that, first of all, the smoke inhaled from the air is chemically and physically different from the smoke inhaled from the end of the cigarette, and, secondly, people who work eight hours a day in heavy-smoking environments had the following CE's (Cigarette Equivalents): Sydney: 0.2 Prague: 1.4 Barcelona: 4.3 That's cigarettes PER YEAR. The worst case they could find had the bartender adding to his cancer risk at the rate of 4.3 cigarettes per year, which is, of course, like saying somebody who eats six Lifesavers is a candidate for heart disease. Even more to the point, scientists computed what would happen if a 20-by-20-foot room with a 9-foot ceiling were filled with smoke, and then compared that exposure to the EPA's lowest published "danger" doses. Here are the results: For the lowest level of danger for benzopyrene, you would need to have 222,000 cigarettes burning in the room. For the lowest level of acetone, you would need to burn 118,000 cigarettes. For the lowest level of hydrazine, you would need 14,000 cigarettes. And for toluene, you would need a cool million smokes, all burning at the same time. Unless, of course, you opened the door or window -- then you would need more. John C. Bailar, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine recently, said that, if you sum up all the available evidence, the MOST alarming case you can make for second-hand smoke being related to disease is "We don't know." (He was primarily writing about heart disease, but the conclusions on lung cancer are similar.) Bailar was being polite. We know. Get a ventilation fan. Put up a sign. Go to separate rooms. But let's not start a whole new era of Prohibition in which people have to open speakeasies and private clubs just to enjoy a meal or a drink. We can't all afford to go to Paris to smoke. |
I have also seen people who are health fanatics. No artificial ingrediants, no smoking, no drinking, daily excercise, still get lung cancer and heart disease. I think "We don't know" would be the best conclusion. The "experts" have said at one time that coffee contributes to bone marrow cancer, then they found out it was wrong. They also said cell phone usage causes brain tumors, now they say that that is false. They also said Marijane causes cancer, now they are retracting this statement. "everything you know is wrong" "Weird Al" |
Remember that smoke alarms have dangerous material in them too, but you'd have to strap one to your head for the rest of your life for it to hurt you. one thing that IS true though is that you should never use your cell phone at a gas station. Turn it off. |
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well, i found this: ----- Manufacturers have said there is a risk It's always tempting to dismiss "pass it on" rumors as bunk, but the fact is that mobile phone manufacturers have warned consumers in the past against using the devices near gas pumps. This is an excerpt from a Motorola brochure for the Satellite Series 9500 Portable Telephone: -[T]his telephone has not been designed or approved for use in potentially explosive atmospheres. Areas with a potentially explosive atmosphere are often, not always, clearly marked. Potentially explosive atmospheres include: Fueling areas such as gasoline stations Below deck on boats Fuel or chemical transfer or storage facilities Vehicles using liquefied petroleum gas such as propane Areas where the air contains chemicals or particles such as grain dust or metal powders and Any other area where you would normally be advised to turn off your engine. Sparks in such area would cause an explosion or fire resulting in bodily injury or even death.- No laughing matter, apparently, nor should we suppose Motorola is trying to pull our legs. Similar cautions have been issued by other manufacturers, though industry spokesmen have more recently begun downplaying them, saying the actual risk is very slim, especially with newer and better-constructed models. Still, in accordance with the maxim "'Tis better to be safe than sorry," signs forbidding the use of cell phones near gas pumps are becoming increasingly common in various parts of the world. Shell International explains its new policy in Asian countries thus: "Although driving whilst using a cellular phone is perfectly safe, we do not allow them to be used on the forecourt [of a service station] in case an electronic fault in the phone causes a spark." The prohibition is not in effect at Shell stations in the United States... yet. In June 1999, Exxon began mailing out information and decals to its 8,500 service stations in the U.S. explicitly warning against the use of cell phones near gasoline pumps. According to a CNN report dated June 24, the company regards the risk of explosion as "extremely unlikely" but has chosen to err on the side of safety. Other companies will likely follow. -------- so take from that what you will. Choose your side. Cell phone companies say it can't or might not happen, gas companies say it can. My boyfriend's father is an oil engineer for a major gas company, and he says turn your cell off, so you bet i do! In fact, this particular gas company had a memo sent to all of it's commerical stations saying that if an employee sees someone on a cell phone while pumping, they have to run the fuck out there and MAKE the person turn it off. this makes me realize i should really have a huge dinner party and seat the gas engineer next to the Motorola VP. What a jolly talk they could have! |
The New York suit against the fast-food company alleges that a McDonald's store on the Bronx's Bruckner Boulevard is responsible for the size of a 270 lb-child from the neighbourhood and for that of her equally corpulent fellow plaintiffs. The corporation itself is also responsible, by extension, for childhood obesity across America. By failing to label its fries and Big Macs, McDonald's tricks Americans. McDonald's therefore, and not families, is to blame for children's overeating. So now the company must pay huge sums to any number of parties. Or so goes the argument. The professional cartoonist could not do better. Where else to find three hard-and-fast stereotypes - Americans are enormous porkers, eat fast food to excess and launch crazy lawsuits - united in one picture? But Pelman v McDonald's is newsworthy beyond its entertainment value. The lawsuit also reveals the consequences of half a century of incremental changes in US common law that have undermined the culture of individual responsibility. They have also established the notion of the civil action as a vehicle of general economic redistribution. |
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gas gas gas gas gas. |
Seriously. What about all the electronics in the gas pumps themselves? How are they different? What about pacemakers? Your kid's gameboy? C'mon now. |
gas pumps wouldn't blow up. but static electricity can cause a jet of fire to shoot from your gas tank. |
-they're designed and protected against sparks. What about pacemakers? -they're surrounded by lungs and ribs, with no contact to outside fumes. Your kid's gameboy? - if he's in the car and the door is closed, it might be okay. maybe. Electronic parts of the car have to be protected from gas too, for obvious reasons, just like anything else that is designed to be around gas. But things like cell phones aren't made with this in mind. No one thinks of shit like that until it's too late. And while the first 2 reports turned out to be false, who knows how long until one is real. I'm not freaking out because i got a mass forward e-mail about it. I just tend to trust the advice of people who work with gas all day. |
However, I tend to agree with wisper and suggest you do not use your cell phones while at the pump |
teeheeheeheehee! |
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what's the worst that could happen? |
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poogasmic! |
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