The Surgeon General said there is 'no safe level of exposure' to SHS.
The antis told the lawmakers it was so and now we have a statewide smoking ban in Illinois.

Have you ever wondered just how much SHS nonsmokers are exposed to?

Let's put a smoker and a nonsmoker at a bar about 1 meter(3feet) apart.

Let's put the smoker, a cigarette, and an ashtray in a airtight cube 2 meters(6 feet) on a side.

The nonsmoker will have his nose sticking through the side of this cube so that he only can breathe air from the cube.

We will say that the smoker will take precisely 5 minutes to smoke the cigarette.

The Calif-EPA says that a sitting person breathes about 7.5 liters of air per minute.
(California Environmental Protection Agency)
http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/resnotes/notes/94-11.htm

Thus, the nonsmoker will breathe 37.5 liters of air from the cube while the cigarette is burning.

A cube two meters on a side has 8 cubic meters of air in it.

1 cubic meter is equal to 1,000 liters.

Our cube holds 8,000 liters of air.

The nonsmoker breathes 37.5 liters or .005% or 1/2 of 1% of the air and no more than 1/2 of 1% of the SHS in the air.
This is not very much exposure to SHS!!!

The moment you have air exchange due to air currents and exhaust fans, the amount of exposure is much less!!

You might wonder how that amount of exposure to SHS might relate to exposure to toxins in the real world.

Let's consider Arsenic, a deadly poison and cancer causing toxin.

The EPA sets levels on the amount of arsenic that can be in the water we drink .


According to a study done for the Mass. Dept of Public Health, the total smoke output(both mainstream and sidestream) for
an average cigarette contained 32 nanograms(ng) of arsenic.
(The 1999 Mass. Benchmark Study. Final Report 07/24/00)

Our smoker's cube would contain 32ng of arsenic.

Our nonsmoker would inhale all of .16% of 1ng of arsenic.


The EPA level for arsenic in drinking water is 10 ppb.
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HEC/CSEM/arsenic/standards_regulations.html


10ppb allows for 10 nanograms(billionths of a gram) of arsenic to be present in one gram
of “safe” drinking water.

10 nanograms per gram equates to about 284 nanograms for one ounce glass of water.

A nonsmoker sitting 3 feet from a smoker would have to be exposed to the SHS from
1,775 cigarettes to equal the 'safe' amount of arsenic that could be in 1oz of water.

Beer is 90% water. A 12oz glass of beer contains 10.8oz of water.

The nonsmoker sitting 3 feet from a smoker would have to be exposed to the SHS from
19,170 cigarettes to equal the 'SAFE' level of arsenic in 1 12oz beer.

The statement that 'there is no safe level'of exposure to SHS is totally without merit and a LIE!

Gary K.