I need to be educated on something. The 8 words that are kicking our cause in the proverbial ass are: "There is no safe level of secondhand smoke." The SG said it, and like puppets, the public eats it up. OK, OSHA allows tolerable levels of poisons, chemicals, rat shit, you name it, in all sorts of products we consume daily, and these levels are at times thousands of times greater than anything in secondhand smoke. Why isn't OSHA intervening on this? Was a deal made in the Master Settlement to keep quiet? A statement such as "No Safe Level" literally implies that even if someone lights up in Wichita, Kansas, it will still be deadly to someone breathing air in Hoboken, New Jersey. See what I'm saying?

I feel something needs to be done here ...maybe sending a whole shit load of emails, Letters to OSHA to get them to act on all the bull hocky that the tobacco control, and the SG is putting out..

quote:

OSHA

1647. INDOOR AIR QUALITY IN THE WORKPLACE

Priority: Economically Significant. Major under 5 USC 801.

Unfunded Mandates: Undetermined

Legal Authority: 29 USC 655

CFR Citation: 29 CFR 1910; 29 CFR 1915; 29 CFR 1926; 29 CFR 1928

Legal Deadline: None

Abstract: The health of American workers may be affected by indoor air pollution in the workplace. After reviewing and analyzing available information, OSHA published a proposed indoor air quality rule on April 5, 1994. The proposal would require employers to write and implement indoor air quality compliance plans that would include inspection and maintenance of current building ventilation systems to ensure they are functioning as designed. In buildings where smoking is allowed, the proposal would require designated smoking areas that would be separate, enclosed rooms where the air would be exhausted directly to the outside. Other proposed provisions would require employers to maintain healthy air quality during renovation, remodeling, and similar activities. As proposed, the provisions for indoor air quality would apply to 70 million workers and more than 4.5 million nonindustrial indoor work environments, including schools and training centers, offices, commercial establishments, health care facilities, cafeterias and factory break rooms. The proposed environmental tobacco smoke provisions would apply to all 6 million industrial and nonindustrial work environments under OSHA's jurisdiction.

On December 17, 2001, OSHA withdrew its Indoor Air Quality proposal and terminated the rulemaking proceeding (66 FR 64946). In the years since the proposal was issued in 1994 a great many state and local governments and private employers have taken action to curtail smoking in public areas and in workplaces. In addition, the portion of the proposal not related to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) received little attention during the rulemaking proceedings and the record evidence supporting the non-ETS portion of the proposal is sparse. The Agency found that withdrawal of the proposal would allow it to devote its resources to other projects.

Timetable:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Action Date FR Cite

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Request for Information
NPRM
NPRM Comment Period End
Record Closed
Withdrawn 09/20/91
04/05/94
08/13/94
02/09/96
12/17/01 56 FR 47892
59 FR 15968
59 FR 30560

66 FR 64946
Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: Undetermined

Government Levels Affected: State

Federalism: This action may have federalism implications as defined in EO 13132.

Agency Contact: Steven F. Witt, Director, Directorate of Health Standards Programs, Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Room N3718, 200 Constitution Avenue NW, FP Building, Washington, DC 20210RIN: 1218-AB37

Sorry-call me a dumbass if you wish, but I don't speak legalese. And all the above means, in layman's terms?

Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS)

Because the organic material in tobacco doesn't burn completely, cigarette smoke contains more than 4,700 chemical compounds. Although OSHA has no regulation that addresses tobacco smoke as a whole, Air contaminants, limits employee exposure to several of the main chemical components found in tobacco smoke. In normal situations, exposures would not exceed these permissible exposure limits (PELs), and, as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, OSHA will not apply the General Duty Clause to ETS.

For further information to offer to employers/employees as guidance, you may wish to review a document published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about the health effects from environmental tobacco smoke, A Fact Sheet: Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking. Additional information on indoor air quality in general can be found on the Indoor Air Quality Technical Links page on the OSHA website.

We hope you find this information helpful. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the Office of Health Enforcement at (202) 693-2190


http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p..._REGISTER&p_id=13369

I don't speak leaglease either and I mainly post that page to and bold the address of OSHA..however reading the artical I have concluded that they get millions of letters and for them to act apond any of our request for action the will just send a standard reply and tell ya to contact EPA. which the EPA with send a standard letter telling ya to contact OSHA .. in concluions both OSHA and EPA give you the run-around

quote:

Originally posted by Jemeyes:
I feel something needs to be done here ...maybe sending a whole shit load of emails, Letters to OSHA to get them to act on all the bull hocky that the tobacco control, and the SG is putting out..

As we have all learned by now, smokers are seen as brainwashed, pliable sheep and no one listens what some more enlightened smokers may be saying. Until smokers create their own organization based on the single, unwavering principle "Smoking is good", no one will listen since they know that smokers brainwashed by the toxic antismoking "death curse" are paralyzed and are not going to act coherently in self-defense. After all, as soon as the first dose of this curse was injected into smokers brains in the 1950s, when 75% of men smoked and when the Big Tobacco at least pretended to be on our side, we become a brain-dead giant, an atomized bunch of scared and panicked individuals, ready to be nudged into the self-enslavement. That is how we got from there to here, from smoking in the movie theaters, planes, busses, officies, TV newscasts and talk shows,... to being treated worse than lepers, abused and extored like no other people in memory. If they didn't listen to our interests way back then, they are surely not going to be affected in the slightest by our letters today.

Writing letters, or dealing with the antismoking scum and their paid puppets in government at any level at all, is presently a dead end path, a diversion and a waste of time and resources from the most critical task of neutralizing the "death curse" which keeps smokers atomized and paralyzed as a coherent group aware of its self-interests. And the only antidote for the curse is what the wise, old Dr. William T. Whitby realized: "Smoking is good for you." As soon as the antidote reaches all the smokers, the war is won and the rest is a mopup operation.

Our natural allies are tobacco farmers, especially smaller ones, and the Little Tobacco, small hungry tobacco companies and small rolling tobacco, pipe tobacco companies who are being shut out from the market by the big guys through their protection racket with states, the MSA. The present push by Philip Morris to get FDA to regulate tobacco would put an end to the 'little tobacco', hence they will need to act fast and a true smokers organization would be their best chance against the big guys.

Additional allies are restaurant and bar owners and supplement & vitamin industry and organizations, who are under the attack by the same Big Pharma thieves, first by suppressing supplements through their FDA attack dogs and now through whipping up the anti-tasty-foods hysteria based on allegedly harmful cholesterol (also here, here), which attacks restaurants on the second front (antismoking was the first one).

This message has been edited. Last edited by: nightlight,

Hi, guys,
a bit of info covering the time of the Clean Indoor Air Act from an interesting paper.

http://www.nteu280.org/history.htm
(My comment - personal choice blame covered an astonishing variety of lucrative industrial ills, and I'm thinking gag orders were in effect to prevent public awareness of scientific protest regarding the ETS nonsense of the time.
Sensitivity to smoke is a symptom of toxicity and resultant immune disorders, not a natural occurance or we'd never have survived.)
'...In July 1987, after putting up with years of poor indoor air quality in EPA work spaces, the union negotiated a landmark Clean Air Agreement with EPA. The agreement, since copied by many other federal unions, called for limiting sources of indoor air pollution and for controlling related risks. Within months of the agreement's signing, hundreds of EPA employees were made sick by new carpet installed in Headquarters buildings. Scores acquired Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), a disease in which people become increasingly sensitive to lower and lower levels of an increasing variety of chemicals, experiencing a range of respiratory, neurologic, and other impairments. Eventually, some found it virtually impossible to function in many environments. This happened to EPA employees who had no previous significant health problems of any kind.
The Director of EPA's Health and Safety Division, David Weitzman, admitted in a September 1989 Washington Times
article that "The freshly manufactured carpet clearly caused the initial illness." That was something the union had pointed out and had begun to take action on as soon as employees started getting sick, almost two years prior to Weitzman's admission. During those two years of struggle, EPA continued to pretend that it couldn't say for sure what had caused the problems, admitting to the union President, however, that the reason for playing dumb was to "avoid getting involved in lawsuits." EPA also downplayed the occurrence of MCS among its employees, claiming that these employees only thought they were getting sick from carpet emissions. During that two year period, as the union made its fight over toxic carpet a matter of public record through various national and international media and the Congress (See Hirzy testimony to Senate Government Operations Committee), it received hundreds of phone calls and letters from citizens reporting similar incidents in their homes, work places and children's schools. Many of these included heart-rending reports of induction of MCS, mimicking EPA employees' experience.
Within six months of the first employee illnesses, union scientists had developed an investigative and risk control strategy to deal with bad quality carpet and tried to get EPA to use it, but with no perceptible success. EPA fobbed off the major part of the task to CPSC, which in turn developed its own "investigative" process. The union President happened to be the Senior Scientist in the EPA Branch that was working with CPSC on the project. When he found that only $5000 had been allotted by the U.S. Government to conduct a nationwide investigation of citizens' reports of carpet toxicity, and that EPA refused to use data it had collected on sick employees and emissions from the carpet out of fear of involvement in lawsuits, he wrote a memo to his boss decrying those ethical failures. It was apparent that EPA and CPSC were far more interested in causing no inconvenience to the carpet industry than in protecting the public from harm caused by bad product.
So the union took unique action - in January 1990 it filed a citizens' petition under TSCA section 21 asking EPA to take specific regulatory actions to protect the public from the kind of injuries its own employees had suffered in their EPA offices. Here was a group of EPA scientists, whose jobs included assessing hazards, exposures and risks from toxic chemicals, writing a detailed justification and plan for EPA action to control risks from carpet emissions and compelling a response.
EPA declined to take on the carpet industry (and also probably the then-extant White House Council On Competitiveness) by granting any of the relief sought in the union's petition. An EPA official came to the union President's office in April 1990 and told him that if it were to grant the relief, "It could cost the carpet industry billions of dollars." The reason for that being that if EPA were to make the finding of "unreasonable risk" that was necessary for EPA to take action, tort claims against carpet manufacturers would quickly flood the court system.
So, instead of making the "unreasonable risk" finding and granting the relief, EPA proposed creating a "Carpet Policy Dialogue," which was to be charged with investigating carpet emissions and ways of controlling them. EPA invited the union to sit as a member of the Dialogue panel with about 25 other entities that included the Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI), chemical companies, other Federal agencies, and independent experts. The Dialogue, begun in August 1990, proved in the
end to be just another smoke screen for the carpet industry, and EPA abandoned the charge to the Dialogue to look for ways
to control emissions. The carpet industry morphed the Dialogue into a marketing gimmick by mid 1992, eventually developing out of it what the industry called its "Green Tag" program.
If that single, one square foot sample passed the test, the entire year's run of that carpet type was entitled to a "Green Tag", which CRI said would, "tell consumers that the carpet or rug they buy meets the predetermined indoor air quality testing criteria." Anyone with a modicum of experience in quality control could see that testing a one square foot sample, once a year, could not possibly be an adequate method of assuring product quality, as claimed by CRI. The union filed a complaint with
the Federal Trade Commission in September 1992 over that CRI program, and in Congress there were subsequent demands that CRI abandon this advertising campaign.
In a September 1996 Louisiana tort action, the judge awarded $4.2 million to a consumer injured by carpet emissions who relied on television advertisements, that the Court found, ". . .do lead the viewer to believe. . ." that the carpet is warranted as safe.
As injuries to employees became evident, the union engaged management and the Department of Labor in several ways. We got a briefing on Workmen's Compensation processes for Headquarters employees and sought assistance from OSHA (who found, not surprisingly, that no existing indoor air quality standards were being violated at EPA). We got management to stop installing any more of the toxic carpet, and eventually to sign an agreement not to use any carpet containing styrene-butadiene (SB) latex at Headquarters and to remove all such carpet that had been installed. We won the right for employees to vote on what kind of new floor coverings they wanted in their work space and we conducted elections in many work units
on this question. We got the four part health and environmental quality study run and results published. We fought back management's contentions that employees were not physically sick from carpet emissions, and we testified several times before Congress on the carpet problem and on indoor air quality in general, supporting an Administration plea for $8 million to improve air quality here. ...'
(My comment - transference of blame and misrepresentation of science to protect powerful industry is hardly new - and was endemic at the time of the notorious industry-appointed EPA ETS 'study'.)
'... We have a duty and a right to perform our work in an ethical environment, and to see that our work is not distorted, misrepresented, stolen or lied about in devising false cover for Agency policies. We believe that in order for our constitutional form of government to function we must take and defend this position on ethics, and assure that our advice is also accessible by those who pay our salaries and who are the ultimate defenders of our form of government, the American people. The people must be able to access the information necessary to decide whether the government is acting as their servant or their master. The people must be able to learn whether government decisions are being made for their benefit or the benefit of other interests. Taking action to protect the ethical environment of our work place and to see that the people can make these informed judgements is the center piece of our philosophy of civil service.
So when EPA gets secret orders from OMB to kill rules to protect the public from asbestos risks and then lies about it at a press conference - we take action.
And when EPA holds data on carpet emissions that cause its own employees to get sick and then lies about it for the hidden reason that government cares more about protecting an industry than about protecting the public - we take action.
And when EPA maintains that propane isn't flammable, leading to property damage and injuries and erroneous arrests on
arson charges of un-warned people who use aerosol bombs (literally) in their homes - we take action.
And when EPA proclaims that children's teeth that are brown, cracked, chipped, and pitted are only cosmetic defects, and
that the only adverse health effect from fluoride overdosing is skeletal fluorosis (or death from swallowing a big dose), and
that telling the truth about the carcinogenicity of fluoride is an offense for which an EPA scientist should lose his job, and it does all this to continue the fiction that toxic sludge in drinking water is good for you - we take action.
We recognize that our duty to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies,
foreign and domestic" extends to not acquiescing in having our work used for cover in such ethical catastrophes as these. In confronting our consciences, we chose not to rely on the defense that failed at Nuremberg.
It is for these ideals that we organized and for which we have fought and for which we will continue to fight. ...'
My comment - why one hears about EPA fighting EPA - one side being the few remaining career scientists still trying, the other side industry interests...

In Canada, the cone of silence Mini-Me Harper creates shows by its very existence the extreme evil he so desperately needs to conceal.
It seems to be a little easier getting info on the U.S. big business Administration and some of the shoes Harper and his ilk's various tongues polish so assiduously.
And we already know he'll do whatever he's told by the 'big boys'...
Thought I'd throw this in as pertinent, in case anybody does check back here and might find this useful:
This relates to the industry cry for smaller government and less 'interference' in protecting the public and environment from outright acts of piracy and micromanaged control, while getting away with literal murder through victim blame...
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Back...view&backgroundid=52

(My comment - ??? what about 'charitable non-profit' antis???)
... 'It's illegal for lobbyists to pay the travel bills of members of Congress. To make the illegal legal, lobbyists pass travel money through charitable nonprofits. That's how they locked up about $4 million in tabs for more
than 800 congressional trips, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found.

Are these lobbyists laundering money provided by conservative clients to fund lawmakers because those clients want nothing from Congress? Or are they just being good liberals and providing humanitarian aid to needy, travel-starved legislators?

Writing about the Center's investigation in The Washington Spectator for July 15, the CPI's executive director, Roberta Baskin, cited a number of findings that should suggest to reporters that there are quite a few self-professed conservatives who are cozying up to that same government they claim to disdain.

"Some 14,000 registered lobbyists influence the legislation and policies put forth by Congress, the White House and more than 200 federal agencies." (An additional 16,000 who qualify as lobbyists under the standard set by the Senate
office of Public Records don't register.)

"In 2004, lobbyists reported spending more than $2.1 billion."

"[A]lmost 250 former members of Congress and federal agency heads are currently registered to lobby their old colleagues. So far, Center researchers have identified 2,200 former government officials who have spun through the revolving door."

"...16 firms have more lobbyists than the Senate has senators."

"...82 companies [are] represented by four or more former members of Congress."

Did 14,000 lobbyists spend more than $2.1 billion in a single year on behalf of employers who were conservatives wanting nothing from the government?

Did the 82 companies each retain four or more former House members or senators to assure that they would get nothing from the government? ...'

Big pharma: welcoming government on its back

And then there is the pharmaceutical industry. It would certainly be worthwhile to ask Norquist and other like-minded conservatives whether that particular industry wants government to leave it alone. To explore this point, it's worth quoting at some length from Baskin's article:

"If you were to take a snapshot of the past seven years," Baskin continued, "you would find that the pharmaceutical and health products industry had spent more influencing the federal government than any other. From 1998 to 2004, the industry spent more than $681 million on federal lobbying. It employed more than 3,000 lobbyists, a third of whom were former government officials.

"In 2003 alone, the industry spent nearly $116 million lobbying the government. That was the year that Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed, the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which created a taxpayer-funded prescription drug benefit for senior citizens.

"By adding the benefit to Medicare, the government program that provides health insurance to some 41 million people, the industry found a reliable purchaser for its products. Thanks to a provision in the law (for which the pharmaceutical industry lobbied), government programs like Medicare are barred from negotiating with companies for lower prices.

(My comment - originally, Canada had a good public program, which had arranged for lower prices on drugs - the whole mess having been starved for privatization expected to garner for American 'health groups' an additional $5 billion annually beyond existing taxes from individuals who can afford to pay for services already paid for.
Governments have latitude and IF they're working for the public can get discounts by bulk-buying, etc.
If they're working for industry interests and are uncontrolled by the public they're supposed to consist of and be the arm of, or at least restrained by an opposition supposed to provide checks and balances but instead hoping only to ultimately sit in the catbird seat to feather their own nests, then the outrageous health-care situation (and all else) seen in America and Britain and spreading to other countries exists.)

"By its own admission, during the run-up to the 2003 Medicare legislation, an important industry trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, organized more than 800 state and local allies and more than 40 national organizations to support a federal legislative agenda helpful to the drug industry; arranged 50 district meetings with key members of Congress; recruited more than 35 prominent academics to discuss the importance of intellectual property protection in the pharmaceutical field; organized more than 10 issue briefings by research organizations; and hosted fly-in educational visits to Capitol Hill by allies and PhRMA researchers."

Baskin went on to observe that the industry's "onslaught was obviously successful, and considering the value that the prescription drug benefit may ultimately add to drug makers' bottom lines, a modest investment with the potential for maximum returns. According to a study done in October 2003 by Boston University professors Alan Sager and Deborah Socolar, 61 percent of Medicare prescription-drug spending will become profit for drug companies. The study predicted that over the next eight years drug makers will receive $139 billion in increased profits."

Who could be more conservative--more ardent in wanting to be left alone by government--than pharmaceutical manufacturers who will be made $139 billion richer, thanks to a new federal program that a true Norquistian conservative should disdain?

It's a disarmingly simple question, as are most of the questions above and these two final ones:

What is it, exactly, that the country's "single most effective conservative activist" strives so hard to conserve? Could it be the opportunity of wealthy and politically powerful corporations to become even wealthier and better equipped to influence the government?

Reporters who would ask such questions of Grover Norquist and other self-proclaimed anti-government conservatives should look forward to having a fun time. They just might find that Greta Garbo really wanted to be left alone, but not so Norquist and his allies.

(My comment - applies all round.
Buzzwords used in the U.S. like conservatives and liberals - and especially scaretactic bogyman terms like communist and socialist - have been distorted out of all meaning: globally, we now essentially have giant industry opposing [small business included in the] public interest, with the latter spreadeagled beneath the former and our various 'industry-friendly' governments holding us down.
Industry buzzwords and attitudes are unconsciously adopted: democracies are not 'marketplaces' staffed with 'human resources' for industry use and abuse - they are communities of individuals of inherently equal worth, entitled to run their lives and small businesses in a fair and reasonable manner, government consisting of, as required, rule by the ruled - the people - with all individuals entitled to equal rights, treatment and opportunity, regardless of anyone's disapproval of their legal activities.
Democratic law and governance ensures a free country with free people who are automatically assumed under law, upon reaching adulthood, to be mentally competent persons capable of making personal decision regarding their own lives, joys, comforts, and chosen traditional, personally worthwhile, minor risks.)

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/12/20/a_contract_...orporate_america.php
'Conclusion—
Despite the frequent claim that “government is the problem,” large corporations have more impact on the life of most Americans. To an extraordinary degree, they control how we earn a living, what we consume and even
what we think. They also have enormous influence over our public life. For too long, the federal government has been acting as a virtual captive of big business interests. The change in control of Congress is the first opportunity in years to start shifting power back to the rest of us.'

My comment - that only works if one side or another has an interest in democracy and the public interest.
But any who don't can't form legitimate democratic government, as they do not fall within the definition; and any illegal laws - forced through in opposition to the principles of democracy and/or Constitutions specifically written so that the concepts within of equality and human rights could not be altered or withheld by any interest or power for any reason, being entailed in perpetuity for those yet to come - these have no force and must be vacated.
It looks like in the U.S., people might have a chance coming up to vote for a president who hasn't already proven he'll go along with whatever Big Pharma and the rest demand, even to signing onto invading other countries to steal their stuff for oil industry profiteering at the cost to the public of billions borrowed from yet another country, and who isn't refusing to impeach a president who betrays his own country and people by trashing their Constitution and evading established procedure by writing himself 'Simon Says' notes to do whatever the corporate empire demands.
In fact, this presidential prospect seems to be the only one speaking against what should properly be termed self-interests, who've been running government and everybody's lives around the world.
It looks like those in the U.S. maybe have a chance to vote for a president who was forced to quit smoking in order to run for the office, because bigots would use that against him.
It looks like maybe Americans finally have a chance to vote for a guy who doubly knows what it's like to be an identifiable minority the vindictive will see as fair prey.
It looks like you guys in the States might have a better chance regarding election choice than we do in Canada, although we'll feel the results here, whatever happens.
And Banada just doesn't seem the same.