In a message dated 6/22/2004 10:50:12 AM Central Daylight Time, Mark Snyder writes: >>As for the idea that there are only two references citing the harms associated with secondhand smoke, here's some more for you.
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/roc/tenth/profiles/s176toba.pdf References start on page 5 and run through page 7. Yes, that's two PAGES worth of references. Anyone else want to continue this silly argument that we don't know enough about secondhand smoke to cite it as harmful? Mark, I read the report you cited. I also looked at the references. One of the three primary referents is the 1993 EPA report which was so biased a federal court awarded damages against the EPA. You also brought up the CATO Institute report once again, along with its critique--but again you failed to note that the critique addressed only the issue of direct smoking, not secondhand smoke. My point, once again, is this: if you consult all the organizations who are working for smoking bans, they cite two reports as evidence: the (bogus) 1993 EPA report, and the 1998 WHO report. The former is crap; the latter found only a slight, not statistically significant, risk. If the "experts" can't deliver any evidence better than this, why do we listen to them? I've never argued, nor will I, that direct smoking isn't harmful. Nor would I argue that secondhand smoke wouldn't cause cancer if you exposed someone to a high level of it over a long period of time--a level equivalent to what a smoker is exposed to by direct smoking. But even the worst ventilated bar doesn't do that. We are exposed daily to many, many "known carcinogens." After all, saccarine is a known carcinogen, and people use that daily. The trick is understanding how many dozen diet sodas the rats have to drink every day to get the cancer. Argue all you want about how you don't like it, it makes you sneeze, it smells bad, it makes your hair unpleasant. That's fine, and perfectly valid as far as it goes. But if you're going to say it kills people, then you need to put up some serious, uncontested evidence of this--and it hasn't happened yet. --M. G. Stinnett Jordan REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
