On Jul 26, 2004, at 9:27 AM, Clark C. Griffith wrote:
The discussion of the smoking ban is very interesting. The ban is based on the allegation that second hand smoke is dangerous. Various people came forward with impassioned statements to this effect, but I don't recall there being any facts, real facts, used in support. In other words they sounded terrific, scared everyone to death, panicked the city council, (which was too easy to do) and now have a law they can embrace. Of course, the second hand smoke issue is phony. <snip>
The studies on secondhand smoke are just beginning to come out. About a month ago the British Medical Journal published a study that examined over 4,700 non-smokers for the effects of secondhand smoke on the heart. It found by studying the levels of cotinine in the blood, a by-product of the nicotine found in cigarettes, that smaller amounts of exposure to secondhand smoke than previously thought increase the risk for heart disease by as much as 60%. The telling part of this study for the Minneapolis Issues List is that the researchers studied secondhand smoke not only in the home of someone who has a partner who smokes, but also in bars and workplaces. The scary thing it found was how little exposure to secondhand smoke was necessary to cause these increased risks in heart disease. This study took place over a period of twenty years, and has a very high confidence level for a medical study, meaning the link between heart disease and secondhand smoke is solid. The British Medical Journal is one of the foremost medical journals in the world with a reputation on par with the New England Journal of Medicine.
Here is a link to the study itself:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/329/7459/200
And to an article summarizing the study in Forbes magazine:
http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2004/07/01/ hscout519839.html
And another summary found at the Christian Broadcasting Network site:
http://www.cbn.com/CBNNews/news/040708a.asp
Will this put the issue of secondhand smoke to rest? I doubt it as there are always people who question the validity of any study that seems to go against what they want to believe. But to me, it is just the start of studies that will be coming out in the future taking a look at the previously ignored consequences of secondhand smoke. For instance, this study did not check the nonsmokers for increased cancer risks, just for heart disease. It is likely and intuitive that those cancer risk levels will also be elevated, but at this time there is not a long-term study completed to prove that. Time will certainly tell.
From my own personal experience, I have asthma. I have never smoked. There are no genetic markers in my family for asthma. My mother smoked in front of me while I was growing up. If you think for a minute that I believe that anything other than my mother's smoke caused me to develop asthma in my late teens, you are nuts. Most of the studies so far have gone to proving the link between smoking itself and health issues like heart disease and cancer, which was certainly needed to convince people that smoking was indeed harmful. The future will be full of studies showing the links between secondhand smoke and these same health issues, just as this British survey has done.
Andrew Reineman Linden Hills
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