Andrew Warner

Hopefully Smoke Free Ohio will be boosted by the timely release of The Surgeon General's report on smoking. Apparently, second hand smoke is bad for you. Who would have thought it:

"I am here to say the debate is over: the science is clear," Dr. Carmona said at a televised news conference, where he released a report updating the original surgeon general's study of secondhand smoke in 1986. Since then, hundreds of studies have indicated that the harm caused by secondhand smoke is far greater than earlier believed, he said. The report includes these findings:

¶There is no safe level of secondhand smoke, and even brief exposure can cause harm, especially for people suffering from heart or respiratory diseases.

¶For nonsmoking adults, exposure raises the risk of heart disease by 25 percent to 30 percent and of cancer by 20 percent to 30 percent. It accounted for 46,000 premature deaths from heart disease and 3,000 premature deaths from cancer last year.

¶Secondhand smoke is a cause of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, accounting for 430 deaths last year. The risk is elevated for children whose mothers were exposed during pregnancy and for children exposed in their homes after birth.

¶The impact on the health and development of children is more severe than previously thought. "Children are especially vulnerable to the poisons in secondhand smoke," Dr. Carmona said.

¶Efforts to minimize the effect of secondhand smoke by separating smokers and nonsmokers are ineffective, as are ventilation systems in a shared space.

¶While exposure has declined, as many as 60 percent of nonsmokers show biological evidence of encountering secondhand smoke, and 22 percent of children are exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes.

But of course, there are always nay-sayers even when the truth is clear to the most unscientific of the lay people. People who pick out a sentence or two of multi-chapter report and build a house of cards around it. The scientists at RJ Reynolds respectfully disagree, Dr. Surgeon General. An e-mailer sends a tidbit from Democracy Now:

A statement on the RJ Reynolds website reads: ''It seems unlikely that secondhand smoke presents any significant harm to otherwise healthy nonsmoking adults.”

Who are you going to listen to on this issue? The surgeon general? The harsh tingling in your nose and lungs when someone blows smoke in your face? Or the "scientists" of the tobacco industry?

It's truly sad that there are still people arguing about this.

Posted by Andrew Warner on Friday, June 30, 2006 at 1:09 AM | Permalink