Tag Archives: secondhand smoke

Secondhand Smoke, Firsthand Lies

4 Comments

Secondhand Smoke has reared its ugly head again. We were so caught up with display bans, plain packaging, thirdhand smoke, outdoor bans, apartment bans, potential private housing bans, airbrushing smoking out of photos and banning it from films that secondhand smoke all but disappeared.

It’s actually a pretty brave comeback, seeing as a lot of people never bought it in the first place and a lot of others have gradually realised it’s a lie, too. But, two days ago, Science Daily reported this:

being exposed to even low-levels of cigarette smoke may put people at risk for future lung disease, such as lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Ok, former Surgeon General Carmona was spouting this rubbish, in direct contradiction of his report, back in 2006, so it’s nothing new. It goes on:

Epidemiological studies have long shown that secondhand smoke is dangerous

No, they haven’t. The famed 1992 EPA report contained 11 studies, none of which individually showed a risk. The only way they purported any risk was by lowering the Confidence Interval to 90% and cherry-picking data, and even then the ‘risk’ emerged so low that it wouldn’t be accepted in any other area of science. The large study undertaken by the WHO found no statistically significant risk, the only statistical significance was that passive smoke offered a 22% decrease in a child’s chance of getting lung cancer as an adult – a protective effect. The largest passive smoking study, by Enstrom and Kabat, also found no risk. President of the prestigious Research Institute Necker, retired world-renowned pulmonolgist Professor Philippe Even has spoken of the lack of risk from secondhand smoke:

There are about a hundred studies on the issue. First surprise: 40% of them claim a total absence of harmful effects of passive smoking on health. The remaining 60% estimate that the cancer risk is multiplied by 0.02 for the most optimistic and by 0.15 for the more pessimistic … compared to a risk multiplied by 10 or 20 for active smoking! It is therefore negligible. Clearly, the harm is either nonexistent, or it is extremely low.

Interviewer: It is an indisputable scientific fact. Anti-tobacco associations report 3 000-6 000 deaths per year in France …

Even: I am curious to know their sources. No study has ever produced such a result.

Interviewer: Many experts argue that passive smoking is also responsible for cardiovascular disease and other asthma attacks. Not you?

Even: They don’t base it on any solid scientific evidence. Take the case of cardiovascular diseases: the four main causes are obesity, high cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes. To determine whether passive smoking is an aggravating factor, there should be a study on people who have none of these four symptoms. But this was never done. Regarding chronic bronchitis, although the role of active smoking is undeniable, that of passive smoking is yet to be proven. For asthma, it is indeed a contributing factor … but not greater than pollen!

A pretty different picture to what we’re led to believe, then. But why wait until retirement to tell the public this information?

As a civil servant, dean of the largest medical faculty in France, I was held to confidentiality. If I had deviated from official positions, I would have had to pay the consequences. Today, I am a free man.

Not sure what he means? Ask Dr Enstrom, one of the remaining scientists who lets his research speak for itself rather than speaking from a political idology or agenda. His bravery to remain a true scientist has cost him his professional position (more here and here)

Back to Science Daily:

but there have never been conclusive biological tests demonstrating what it does to the body at a gene function level, until now.

“Even at the lowest detectable levels of exposure, we found direct effects on the functioning of genes within the cells lining the airways,” says Dr. Ronald Crystal, senior author of the study

She’s right, there haven’t been conclusive biological tests demonstrating what it does to the body. Actually, it’s still not known what 80 a day does to your body, and it’s also the case that light smokers, of about “The genetic effect is much lower than those who are regular smokers, but this does not mean that there are no health consequences,” says Dr. Crystal. “Certain genes within the cells lining the airways are very sensitive to tobacco smoke, and changes in the function of these genes are the first evidence of ‘biological disease’ in the lungs or individuals.”
Sounds good, right? Not really. We experience gene mutations and changes in functions every single day, simply through being alive. Our cells die and get replaced and our body heals itself of all manner of damage. Simply noticing that the lungs are part of this process is not damning news. It’s akin to saying that when you eat, your digestive system changes and therefore eating is bad for you. when we eat, our whole body changes; blood is directed to the stomach and our body works hard to process what we eat – it’s not inconceivable for someone to turn around and say ‘hey, the body is working really hard to get that stuff out, because it shouldn’t be there!’ See where I’m going with this?

There’s probably not much point in me including the following excerpt as it’s now so routine in study reports that we’d be more surprised to not see it, but just in case you’re wondering why this so-called researcher is spouting such propoagandist manure:

Dr. Crystal says that this is further evidence supporting the banning of smoking in public places, where non-smokers, and employees of businesses that allow smoking, are put at risk for future lung disease.

I think the gaping flaw is that if a wisp of smoke is maliciously altering lung function, how can we smoke 40, 60 a day and survive to be elderly? Even CRUK acknowledge that the average age of cancer in a smoker is 65 – the same age as it is for non-smokers.

As for the specifics of this “study”, check this out:

Crystal and colleagues took urine samples from 121 participants to see how much exposure people had to cigarette smoke, measuring nicotine and its breakdown products. This allowed them to classify participants as active smokers, nonsmokers, and people with low-level exposure.

Like it isn’t bad enough trusting a doctor with a stripper’s name, we now see a sample so small most other studies and sciences wouldn’t even permit it, and categorised people based on nicotine in the urine. Let’s hope they didn’t have potatoes, aubergine or tomatoes for lunch. CNN reported on it, too, saying:

Crystal speculates that the effects of secondhand smoke may be reversible if a person cuts off exposure to smoke entirely.

Of course she did. I think someone needs to tell her what secondhand smoke actually is

Your Home is Not Safe

5 Comments

Most of us knew the ‘discovery’ of thirdhand smoke was nothing more than a new political leverage for the anti-smokers; something they could use to deny smokers fostering, adopting, teaching and smoking at home. This could never happen straight away, but in small increments. With vindication that we never wanted, this turned out to be exactly the case. In the USA especially, smokers are increasingly demonised and an increasing number of businesses refuse to employ smokers – even if they smoke outside of working hours. This is spreading to anyone using NRT, presumably in case they ‘relapse’ and go back to tobacco. Anyone following the F2C blog will be aware of the fuss Grampian hospitals have been kicking up to refuse anyone smoking on the grounds, including patients, with the penalty being that treatment will be refused. Completely illegal of course, but that never stopped them trying.

Michael Siegel reported earlier in the week how a new study has claimed that secondhand smoke exposure causes poor performance academically. The first point of common-sense is to simply ask if SHS causes poor academic performance, how come active smoking has positively beneficial effects on the brain and concentration, and how did we ever evolve with people smoking for our entire history?

As you might have guessed, the study was a crock of shit, as it simultaneously measured self-reported secondhand smoke exposure and self-reported academic performance. In other words, people estimated how much passive smoke exposure they had (I couldn’t ever quantify that, could you?) and also stated their academic performance. Not exactly rigorous science by any stretch of the imagination. So how much did their performance suffer? “Students exposed to SHS at home 1 to 4 and 5 to 7 days per week were 14% (95% CI, 5%-25%) and 28% (15%-41%)”

So, uh, hardly at all. Averages of 14 and 28%? Come on now. No real scientist would ever genuinely consider that noteworthy, so what’s the agenda here?

If exposure to SHS could impair the students’ academic performance and hence reduce their chances to succeed, then home smokers are depriving the students’ human rights to higher education stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—Right to Education (Article 26), which states ‘higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.’

Tobacco control advocates, educators, and human right advocators can also make use of our evidence to negotiate an expansion of smoke-free legislation to the home environment.

Ahhhh. The tried and tested “for the sake of the children” argument. Or, put in a real context, ” we have no evidence whatsoever that tobacco smoke impairs academic performance or cognitive ability, so we’ll tug at the heart-strings instead.” Although it must be noted that the study author is using the term “evidence” incredibly loosely, and it’s admitted by the researchers that there was a significant margin of error:

Although restricting our analyses to nonsmokers only should have largely reduced the confounding effects of unfavorable lifestyle factors associated with smoking, residual confounding cannot be ruled out because of the crude self-reported measures of socioeconomic status and unmeasured lifestyle factors.

In other words, they were unaccounted variables that could, and most certainly would, have affected the results – and if the results were affected, then there would be no “evidence” to push for a home smoking ban, and that just won’t do at all. Moreover, as Siegel notes:

In addition, there are other important confounding variables, such as parental involvement with the child’s education. In other words, there are many reasons why children who are more heavily exposed to secondhand smoke may do poorer in school, and the study cannot adequately rule out these alternative explanations.

Therefore, it is mystifying why the study goes ahead and concludes that the observed association in the study is attributable to a direct, causal effect of secondhand smoke exposure.

 Siegel makes another excellent point, that “because the study is cross-sectional, it cannot establish whether the academic performance problems might have predated the secondhand smoke exposure.” What he means is, no base level of performance was taken. It’s all well and good comparing smoke-exposed to non-smoke-exposed children, but without comparing the same child’s performance before and after exposure began nothing is actually being measured at all.

 If a child typically scored 70-90% on tests, then was exposed to secondhand smoke and his grades went down to 40-50%, and all other variables had been accounted for e.g. general change in attitude towards studies, then a case could exist for secondhand smoke impairing academic performance. As it stands, however, all we have is more pseudo-science, political bullshit printed in a journal to win support.

Thirdhand Smoke Heats Up

4 Comments

The first post of this new blog focuses on thirdhand smoke. It’s a sad state of affairs that this ridiculous notion is still getting attention, but on the plus side the attention is largely disproving the claim that it poses a health threat – though that isn’t stopping the anti-smoking HQ (California) devoting vast sums to “research” into thirdhand smoke. The Request for Proposals (RFP) to “undertake studies on Thirdhand Smoke and Cigarette Butt Waste, under a new initiative” is receiving approximately $3.75 million. Are these people unaware there is a recession and wasting public money should be curbed? Anyway, back to the study in hand.
This is possibly the first study that actually measures thirdhand smoke and compares it to secondhand smoke, which, frankly, is quite disappointing as it means the claims leveled against THS up to this point have been done with no basis. Then again, we already knew that. As Michael Siegel noted, the study, published in Tobacco Control, found that the concentrations of particulate matter in thirdhand smoke were 100 times lower than in secondhand smoke, measured in the same room.
The methodology was as follows:
“A smoking device burned 10 cigarettes in 30 minutes in a non-ventilated furnished room that was then kept closed. On the next day, for particle resuspension, we mobilised the dust on furniture, clothes and surfaces by wiping and shaking and created even more turbulence with a ventilator. An impactor (ELPI) measured the particle sizes (between 0.28 μm and 10 μm) and concentration in the air, 60 cm above the floor: on the first day before and after the cigarettes were smoked (secondhand smoke) then 4 hours later, 24 hours later, before and after resuspension manoeuvres (thirdhand smoke).”

The researchers found that:
“after cigarette smoking: the airborne particles … concentration was divided by 100 in the first 4 hours and again by 100 in the following 24 hours. After resuspension, the concentration was multiplied by 100, going back to that observed 4 hours after smoking.”

The study concludes: 
“These quantitative data support the hypothesis of a resuspension from the cigarette smoke surface contamination. However, this airborne contamination through resuspension remains much lower (100 times) than that of secondhand smoke. The rest of the aerosol mass initially produced by cigarettes could be firmly attached either to surfaces, leading to ingestion hazards and dermal transfer or to household dust and be inhaled with it.”
The first part of the conclusion clearly states to any rational person that the THS story should be put to bed. However, being tobacco control, such an admission could never be made and so they must resort to saying that “ingestion hazards” and inhalation risks exist. In theory, this may be true. In reality, this is true: thirdhand smoke exists, and there exists the possibility that some degree may be ingested, but the quantity would be so small as to be barely measureable. We already know that 90% of secondhand smoke is ordinary air and water, and that the risks of SHS are so negligible as to be more or less non-existant – only individuals with an almost unprecedented level of sensitivity are posed any harm, and such people are also threatened by day-to-day pollution, dust particles etc. So having established this, why should any person worry about particulate matter that measures in at 100 times lower than the essentially harmless secondhand smoke?
This study effectively demolishes the claims by Dr Winickoff and ASH etc, who roundly spew the garbage that a smoker with a lingering odour of tobacco poses a health threat to healthy co-workers, friends and family. Moreover, it certainly provides reason to abolish the absurd, but increasingly popular, trend of not hiring smokers solely because they smoke under the pretence that thirdhand smoke puts others at risk.