A headline you will never see.
Gary K.

"Anti smokers report that 49,999 out of 50,000 nonsmoking bar workers exposed to SHS do NOT die from lung cancer!!"

At every press release and news conference you'll hear the same messages repeated from the anti-smoker fanatics, with neither comment nor questions from journalists.

“Secondhand smoke kills”. “There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke”.

A non-smoker who has never been regularly exposed to secondhand smoke has a 1 in 10,000 chance of dying from lung cancer.(EPA Report,1993)

The Surgeon General's Report of 2006 says for non-smokers who have been regularly exposed to secondhand smoke, there is an increased risk of 20% to 30%, which translates into a 1 in 33,333 (at 30% increased risk) or 1 in 50,000 (at 20% increased risk).

If the statistics offered by the Surgeon General in 2006 are correct, just what does that do to the contention of the anti-smoker brigade that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke?

If only one in 33,333 non-smokers (to use the highest figure) regularly exposed to secondhand smoke will die of lung cancer, then the corollary is also true; which means that 33,332 will not be affected.
But, if there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke, how is that possible?

How can 33,332 non-smokers regularly exposed to secondhand smoke escape the ravages of lung cancer if there is no safe level of exposure?

Such a claim stretches the limits of credibility and defies logic.

Are the anti-smoker fanatics lying when they say that exposure to secondhand smoke is a cause of lung cancer? Are they lying when they say there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke? Have the alleged hazards of secondhand smoke been exaggerated beyond reason?

Questions . . . questions . . . questions?

The statistics provided by the anti-smoker brigade tell us that 33,332 out of 33,333 or 49,999 out of 50,000 non-smokers regularly exposed to secondhand smoke will not die of lung cancer.

Note; this is a life time risk, after a life time of exposure to SHS.

Headlines shoud read:
Pro smoking ban fanatics say that after 40-50 years of exposure to SHS,49,999 out of 50,000 bar workers will not die from lung cancer.

As for patrons; workers are exposed 40 hours per week, a patron might be exposed for only 4 hours per week.

This is 1/10th the risk.

Another headline should read:
Pro ban anti smokers say that after 40-50 years of exposure to SHS in bars, 499,999 out of 500,000 nonsmoking patrons will not die from lung cancer!!

Pro smoking ban fanatics say that after 40-50 years of exposure to SHS,49,999 out of 50,000 bar workers will not die from lung cancer.
...................
Another way of looking at this from an individual bar worker's point of view, it might take(50 years x 49,999) about 2,500,000 years for it to be your turn to get lung cancer!!

A bar worker might conclude that this 2,500,000 year wait was not worth the loss of income or of a job that would be caused by a smoking ban!!

Antis pushing for a smoking ban in bars never,I MEAN NEVER, ask for the bar workers or owners to vote on the issue!!
Gary K.

quote:

Antis pushing for a smoking ban in bars never,I MEAN NEVER, ask for the bar workers or owners to vote on the issue!!

...................

A local real estate broker did that in her presentation to the Aiken SC city council. She collected signatures from about 150 bar workers, asking if they wanted a ban and if shs was an issue for them.

Of the 150 questioned, only six said they supported a ban and were bothered by shs.

There are certainly more than six jobs in non smoking bars in Aiken SC.

Sadly, they passed the ban anyway with a 4-3 vote.

One council member changed her vote to no for the ban after hearing the presentation.

The council also said they were willing to look at it again in six months should bars be impacted significantly.

Owners of bars and others who will be affected by a future ban MUST get involved very early in the process and arrive at the meetings with ammunition such as this. I think that is happening more often but clearly not enough.
Sheri Dornhecker

quote:

Originally posted by gkayser30:
A non-smoker who has never been regularly exposed to secondhand smoke has a 1 in 10,000 chance of dying from lung cancer.

The Surgeon General's Report...non-smokers...regularly exposed to secondhand smoke...an increased risk of 20% to 30%, which translates into a 1 in 33,333 (at 30% increased risk) or 1 in 50,000 (at 20% increased risk).

Gary,
You might have calculated something wrong. You have risk decreasing with increased risk. 1/10,000 to 1/33,000 (or 1/50,000) is not an increase in risk, but a decrease.

Or do you mean one additional death per 33,000 (or 50,000) people?

Additional it would be.

altho; if you really want to be EPA-like, you could say that the risk of lung cancer for non-smokers is 1/10,000 and the risk for SHS exposed non-smokers is 1.2/10,000.

Since the 1/10,000 that caused the lung cancer in the SHS exposed group could be the same thing as the non-exposed group, the real risk for SHS exposure would be .2/10,000 as compared to the non-exposed 1/10,000.

That would be a bit much to say.

Since there are 6/50,000 deaths from lung cancer caused by SHS, and there are 225,000,000 non-smokers in the USA, there are 27,000 deaths from lung cancer caused by SHS(225,000,000 divided by 50,000 = 4,500 x 6 = 27,000) and since this is 17% of the lung cancer deaths per year,and since the other 83% or so are smokers' lung cancer deaths,you could say "SMOKING CAUSES ALL LUNG CANCER DEATHS IN THE USA!!!"

The three dozen or so other things that are said to cause lung cancer have been falsely accused.

I do not know how the antis have failed to see this.

Now; if non-smokers account for 17% of the lung cancer deaths, smokers account for only 83%.

This means that smokers are only about 4.9 times as likely to get die from lung cancer as are non-smokers, not the 10 or more times as commonly stated!!

Math is wonderful, numbers will prove anything that you need proved to suit your agenda!!
Gary K.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: gkayser30,

quote:

Since there are 6/50,000 deaths from lung cancer caused by SHS, and there are 225,000,000 non-smokers in the USA...

The 225,000,000 would be counting kids, correct?

If you subtract (70,000,000(?)) kids from the picture (because I don't think they even have stats on kids/lung cancer) you're left with 230,000,000. Of that number, about 100,000,000 are current and former smokers.

Using those numbers, I believe lung cancer risk in nonsmokers goes up slightly (from whatever) and smokers RRs are reduced even further from your 4.9.

quote:

The 225,000,000 would be counting kids, correct?

............
No,there are 300 million people in the USA, 75% or 225 million are adults.
Sorry!

However, consider this,when they say that 85% of lung cancers are smokers,they do not mention that they are including ex-smokers in this group.

This distinction is important because most ex-smokers are older,this is where most lung cancers occur.

http://www.lungcanceralliance.org/washingtonbriefs_2007_fact_sheet.htm
In fact, non-smokers now account for nearly 20 percent of all new lung cancer cases and over 50% of new lung cancer patients are former smokers, many of whom quit decades ago, says the Alliance for Lung Cancer (Alcase), a Vancouver, Wash.-based non-profit group.

http://stopsmoking.uchicago.edu/benefits.html
Chicago STOP Smoking Research Project

Benefits of Quitting Smoking
Health benefits from quitting smoking:

lung cancer death rate decreases by half in 5 years, and is similar to that of nonsmokers after 10 years


The American Lung Association
http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=33568

Long-term Benefits of Quitting
At 10 years:
risk of lung cancer drops to as little as one-half that of continuing smokers
At 15 years:
risk of death returns to nearly the level of people who have never smoked(note: this statement would include Lung Cancer death!-Gary K.)

http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/brfss/Trends/trendchart_c.asp?...key=10000&SUBMIT1=Go

http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?ind=80&cat=2

According to the CDC,there has actually been very little decrease in the percentage of the population that smokes since about 1990.
1965 = 46% smoked
1990 = 23% smoked
2006 = 20.1% smoked

About 90% of ex-smokers had quit by 1990.

Thus, almost all ex-smokers would have the same risk for lung cancer as never smokers.

http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?ind=80&cat=2
Adult Smoking Rate(cigarettes)
United States 20.1%


ACS Cancer Report 2008:
In 2005, 6% of adults aged 18 and older had smoked cigars in the past month.

I understand that pipe smokers are only 1% of the adult population.

20% + 6% + 1% =27% of the adult population are smokers.
There are about as many x-smokers as smokers.

There are about 50 million smokers and thus about 50 million x-smokers. 10% of the x-smokers have a risk of lung cancer somewhat approaching smokers = 5 million.

There are about 225 million adults in the USA, 5 million is 2.2% of them.

Thus, you would have 27% of the adult population as smokers and 2.2% of the population as somewhat recent x-smokers, total 29.2% of the adult population getting 30% of the lung cancers.

This is rather close to the same ratio as the rest of the adult population.

Conclusion: I respectfully submit that current smokers have no greater risk of getting lung cancer than do non-smokers.

quote:

No,there are 300 million people in the USA, 75% or 225 million are adults.
Sorry!

The numbers I use are:
70 million kids
230 million adults
---------
300 million

130 million never smokers
100 million current and former smokers
-----------
230 million (adults)

You had written:
"Since there are 6/50,000 deaths from lung cancer caused by SHS, and there are 225,000,000 non-smokers in the USA..."

Our numbers are basically the same here, 225 vs 230, but you're saying 225 million are nonsmokers. That's why I was asking if you were counting kids because your 225 million nonsmokers number is high compared to mine. Former smokers shouldn't be included with nonsmokers (never smokers).

Some could be counted I suppose, those who quit smoking decades ago, but I've never bought into the idea that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer in former smokers, but SHS causes lung cancer in former smokers.

We're grouping people in different categories I guess.

quote:

You had written:
"Since there are 6/50,000 deaths from lung cancer caused by SHS, and there are 225,000,000 non-smokers in the USA..."

...............
Nothing but a stupid error in thinking(or,lack thereof!)

http://www.lungcanceralliance.org/washingtonbriefs_2007_fact_sheet.htm
"In fact, non-smokers now account for nearly 20 percent of all new lung cancer cases and over 50% of new lung cancer patients are former smokers, many of whom quit decades ago, says the Alliance for Lung Cancer (Alcase), a Vancouver, Wash.-based non-profit group."

Smokers(cigarette/cigar/pipe) are about 27% of the adult population.

CDC says that ex-smokers are about the same = 27%.

Never smokers would be about 46% of the adult population.

There are about 160,000 deaths from lung cancer per year and exsmokers would account for over half of them,say about 81,000 lung cancer deaths per year.

EPA said that there are about 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year from exposure to SHS.

Since there are about twice as many never smokers as exsmokers, let's say that 2,000 of those deaths were neversmokers and 1,000 exsmokers.

That would leave about 80,000 lung cancer deaths to exsmokers from the smoking that they may have quit decades ago!

Smokers(the same 27% of the adult population) would only account for 30% of the lung cancer deaths or 48,000.

Thus, exsmokers are 2/3rds more likely to die from lung cancer than are current smokers!!

WHY QUIT,QUITTING MAKES YOU MORE LIKELY TO DIE FROM LUNG CANCER!!

Gary K.

You know what they're going to do? They're going to say SHS is even deadlier than they thought and revise the 3,000 number to 10 or 20 or 50,000.

CalEPA has already been using 3,600 for a few years now.

quote:

CalEPA has already been using 3,600 for a few years now.

...............
No one has ever said that the antis were very smart.

The population is 20% higher than in 1990 when the 3,000 got started, they just added 20% to get 3,6000.

If exposure to SHS 'caused' lung cancer,the number should be going down by a large margin.

Since 1965 the smoking rate(50%),and exposure rate to SHS(75%), has gone down with most of the decline occuring by 1990.

There has been very little decline in smoking rates since 1990;but, there has been a HUGE increase in smoking bans,thus limiting exposure to SHS even more.

The exposure rate to SHS has decreased by about 75% since 1965.

If exposure to SHS caused lung cancer, we should have seen a HUGE decrease in the lung cancer deaths caused by SHS,at least 50% to 1,500 per year.

CalEPA says that there has been no drop;therefore, CalEPA proves that lung cancer is NOT caused by SHS!!

The claimed 55,000 total deaths caused by SHS should also have gone down at least 50% to about 27,500.

Since the claimed number of deaths caused by SHS has never declined, this proves that SHS can NOT be responsible for the deaths in question!!

Gary K.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: gkayser30,

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=23399

Scientific Evidence Shows Secondhand Smoke Is No Danger
Written By: Jerome Arnett, Jr., M.D.
Published In: Environment & Climate News
Publication Date: July 1, 2008
Publisher: The Heartland Institute


Exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) is an unpleasant experience for many nonsmokers, and for decades was considered a nuisance. But the idea that it might actually cause disease in nonsmokers has been around only since the 1970s.

Recent surveys show more than 80 percent of Americans now believe secondhand smoke is harmful to nonsmokers.


Federal Government Reports

A 1972 U.S. surgeon general's report first addressed passive smoking as a possible threat to nonsmokers and called for an anti-smoking movement. The issue was addressed again in surgeon generals' reports in 1979, 1982, and 1984.

A 1986 surgeon general's report concluded involuntary smoking caused lung cancer, but it offered only weak epidemiological evidence to support the claim. In 1989 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was charged with further evaluating the evidence for health effects of SHS.

In 1992 EPA published its report, "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking," claiming SHS is a serious public health problem, that it kills approximately 3,000 nonsmoking Americans each year from lung cancer, and that it is a Group A carcinogen (like benzene, asbestos, and radon).

The report has been used by the tobacco-control movement and government agencies, including public health departments, to justify the imposition of thousands of indoor smoking bans in public places.


Flawed Assumptions

EPA's 1992 conclusions are not supported by reliable scientific evidence. The report has been largely discredited and, in 1998, was legally vacated by a federal judge.

Even so, the EPA report was cited in the surgeon general's 2006 report on SHS, where then-Surgeon General Richard Carmona made the absurd claim that there is no risk-free level of exposure to SHS.

For its 1992 report, EPA arbitrarily chose to equate SHS with mainstream (or firsthand) smoke. One of the agency's stated assumptions was that because there is an association between active smoking and lung cancer, there also must be a similar association between SHS and lung cancer.

But the problem posed by SHS is entirely different from that found with mainstream smoke. A well-recognized toxicological principle states, "The dose makes the poison."

Accordingly, we physicians record direct exposure to cigarette smoke by smokers in the medical record as "pack-years smoked" (packs smoked per day times the number of years smoked). A smoking history of around 10 pack-years alerts the physician to search for cigarette-caused illness. But even those nonsmokers with the greatest exposure to SHS probably inhale the equivalent of only a small fraction (around 0.03) of one cigarette per day, which is equivalent to smoking around 10 cigarettes per year.


Low Statistical Association

Another major problem is that the epidemiological studies on which the EPA report is based are statistical studies that can show only correlation and cannot prove causation.

One statistical method used to compare the rates of a disease in two populations is relative risk (RR). It is the rate of disease found in the exposed population divided by the rate found in the unexposed population. An RR of 1.0 represents zero increased risk. Because confounding and other factors can obscure a weak association, in order even to suggest causation a very strong association must be found, on the order of at least 300 percent to 400 percent, which is an RR of 3.0 to 4.0.

For example, the studies linking direct cigarette smoking with lung cancer found an incidence in smokers of 20 to around 40 times that in nonsmokers, an association of 2000 percent to 4000 percent, or an RR of 20.0 to 40.0.


Scientific Principles Ignored

An even greater problem is the agency's lowering of the confidence interval (CI) used in its report. Epidemiologists calculate confidence intervals to express the likelihood a result could happen just by chance. A CI of 95 percent allows a 5 percent possibility that the results occurred only by chance.

Before its 1992 report, EPA had always used epidemiology's gold standard CI of 95 percent to measure statistical significance. But because the U.S. studies chosen for the report were not statistically significant within a 95 percent CI, for the first time in its history EPA changed the rules and used a 90 percent CI, which doubled the chance of being wrong.

This allowed it to report a statistically significant 19 percent increase of lung cancer cases in the nonsmoking spouses of smokers over those cases found in nonsmoking spouses of nonsmokers. Even though the RR was only 1.19--an amount far short of what is normally required to demonstrate correlation or causality--the agency concluded this was proof SHS increased the risk of U.S. nonsmokers developing lung cancer by 19 percent.


EPA Study Soundly Rejected

In November 1995 after a 20-month study, the Congressional Research Service released a detailed analysis of the EPA report that was highly critical of EPA's methods and conclusions. In 1998, in a devastating 92-page opinion, Federal Judge William Osteen vacated the EPA study, declaring it null and void. He found a culture of arrogance, deception, and cover-up at the agency.

Osteen noted, "First, there is evidence in the record supporting the accusation that EPA 'cherry picked' its data. ... In order to confirm its hypothesis, EPA maintained its standard significance level but lowered the confidence interval to 90 percent. This allowed EPA to confirm its hypothesis by finding a relative risk of 1.19, albeit a very weak association. ... EPA cannot show a statistically significant association between [SHS] and lung cancer."

The judge added, "EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before the research had begun; adjusted established procedure and scientific norms to validate its conclusion; and aggressively utilized its authority to disseminate findings to establish a de facto regulatory scheme to influence public opinion."

In 2003 a definitive paper on SHS and lung cancer mortality was published in the British Medical Journal. It is the largest and most detailed study ever reported. The authors studied more than 35,000 California never-smokers over a 39-year period and found no statistically significant association between exposure to SHS and lung cancer mortality.


Propaganda Trumps Science

The 1992 EPA report is an example of the use of epidemiology to promote belief in an epidemic instead of to investigate one. It has damaged the credibility of EPA and has tainted the fields of epidemiology and public health.

In addition, influential anti-tobacco activists, including prominent academics, have unethically attacked the research of eminent scientists in order to further their ideological and political agendas.

The abuse of scientific integrity and the generation of faulty "scientific" outcomes (through the use of pseudoscience) have led to the deception of the American public on a grand scale and to draconian government overregulation and the squandering of public money.

Millions of dollars have been spent promoting belief in SHS as a killer, and more millions of dollars have been spent by businesses in order to comply with thousands of highly restrictive bans, while personal choice and freedom have been denied to millions of smokers. Finally, and perhaps most tragically, all this has diverted resources away from discovering the true cause(s) of lung cancer in nonsmokers.

Dr. Jerome Arnett Jr. (jerry.arnett@gmail.com) is a pulmonologist who lives in Helvetia, West Virginia.

For more information ...

James E. Enstrom and Geoffrey C. Kabat, "Environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality in a prospective study of Californians, 1960-98," British Medical Journal, May 2003: http://www.heartland.org/article.cfm?artId=23332.


Air quality test results by Johns Hopkins University, the American Cancer Society, a Minnesota Environmental Health Department, and various researchers whose testing and report was peer reviewed and published in the esteemed British Medical Journal......prove that secondhand smoke is 2.6 - 25,000 times SAFER than occupational (OSHA) workplace regulations:


http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com


All nullify the argument that secondhand smoke is a workplace health hazard.
Especially since federal OSHA regulations trump, or pre-empt, state smoking ban laws which are not based on scientific air quality test results.
Mark Wernimont
Watertown, MN.
US Supreme court decision 1992 NEVER OVERTURNED...

A U.S. Supreme court decision during the early 1970's ((Lloyd Corp v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551 (1992)) said a place of business does not become public property because the public is invited in.

So, by that same reasoning. A restaurant or bar is not public property. We need to support small business and stop regulating them out of business.