Quote:
Originally Posted by JonoBN41
This second-hand smoke business is hysterical, and I mean that. People assume now that it's genuinely harmful.
In 2006 the U.S. Surgeon General called a press conference and practically pounded on the podium in order to impress upon us all that second-hand smoke is harmful, and that there is no safe level of exposure.
There are safe levels of all kinds of nasties, such as arsenic, lead, mercury, biphenyls, PCBs, - you name it. But not smoke.
He said that second-hand smoke could account for as many as 3,600 deaths per year in the U.S. Notice the words "could" and "as many as".
The account of this press conference was reported by ABC News, which concluded with the statistic, apparently meant to add drama to the story, that each year 245 million Americans are exposed to second-hand smoke.
Okay, let's do the math. Dividing 3,600 by 245 million, we get .0000146 or .00146%. That's not even two thousandths of one percent.
As any statistician will tell you, that number is not only statistically insignificant, it pretty much proves the safety of second-hand smoke.
But all these studies and meta studies aside, remember that cigarette smoking was very early identified as causing lung cancer and heart disease for the very reason that smokers got it, and non-smokers didn't. If in fact second-hand smoke had had a similar effect on everyone, we would still be trying to figure out what was causing it.
Smoking bans are an agenda, and are not based in scientific fact.
|
While, according to the SG, "There is no safe level of SHS exposure"...OSHA has classified safe levels for every chemical in cigarettes.
Smoke and SHS are WAY under all of OSHA's levels. For example, while there is formaldehyde in cigarettes, cooking dinner on a gas stove puts 400x more into the air than smoking a cigarette.
There is also arsenic in cigarettes, but it would take 375,000 cigarettes smoked per hour in an unventilated 40x20 foot room to reach unsafe OSHA levels.
As I'm sure you know, smoke dissipates in the air. In a "smokey" bar, SHS equals 1/1000th of a cigarette per hour. That would equal, for a average 40 hour work week, about 6 cigarettes per year for a bartender.
Not to mention that the president of the New York Cancer Society was quoted as saying "The Surgeon General's report is false and full of junk science".
Think on this:
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.” –John F. Kennedy
