Guess what? Bars are safe. Thank you anti-smokers. You guys are the best.


AN NHS HOSPITAL contains TWICE the level of deadly cigarette fumes as a smoky club, The People can reveal.

Hapless nurses are forced to inhale the equivalent of TEN CIGGIES a week as they work in a corridor outside a smoking room.

The startling revelation emerged during a People investigation across Britain into the perils of passive smoking in public places.

We launched our investigation after new research claimed that 30 people die EVERY DAY in Britain from inhaling second-hand fumes. Our team used a Smokerlyser - a Government-approved device for health experts - which measures the amount of toxic muck a person has breathed in.

At NORTH MANCHESTER GENERAL HOSPITAL - a no-smoking zone apart from special rooms - our man took the device into the medical recovery ward where patients are struggling to survive heart attacks and cancer. Inside the ward's smoking room, patients - including lung cancer victims - puff away.

Outside the room the extractor fan and roof vent were not enough to stop smoke billowing out into the corridor.

Fumes lingered even 100 YARDS AWAY under low ceilings.

After over two hours in the ward corridor our non-smoking investigator blew into the Smokerlyser to test his carbon monoxide levels. They had risen by 4 parts per million since he entered the hospital - the equivalent to smoking half a cigarette himself.

After three hours at the bar...we tested the effects of the smoky atmosphere.

The Smokerlyser showed carbon monoxide levels were 2 parts per million, equivalent to a quarter of a cigarette and HALF the level in the hospital. The results were possibly due to good ventilation and high ceilings but someone who visited it every night for a month would still breathe in the equivalent of SEVEN cigarettes.

At the £180-a-night County Hotel...our investigator dined on the non-smoking side of the lounge. But after two hours with smoke wafting in his direction he blew into the Smokerlyser and produced a 5 parts per million result equal to inhaling more than half a fag.

Later, we visited a showbiz party...After three hours chatting with chain smoking Sid our CO levels were up 3ppm - the same as smoking almost half of one of his cigarettes.

THE Smokerlyser measures one part of carbon monoxide in one million parts of breath.
It sounds like an extremely small amount until you realise that 4 parts per million is the equivalent to smoking half a cigarette.

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Deadly cigarette fumes. Hapless nurses. The noxious fug. 30 people die EVERY DAY. Toxic muck. Smoke billowing out. Fumes lingered even 100 YARDS AWAY.

Okay, this reporter is hysterical.

I know some hospitals can be quite large, but can there possibly be a hospital so big that there are so many smokers in a recovery room's smoke room that smoke actually billows out? Never mind that there's an operating ventilation system.

And fumes lingering 100 yards down the corridor? I find this mind boggling.

It's not mentioned what the blower's CO levels were prior to the smoke exposure tests. Why not? Are they purposely hiding the fact that on the drives to these venues they probably encountered even higher levels of CO on the street in their car? People get very high CO exposures in their cars. Bicyclists in some cities look like smokers when blowing into these machines. Anyway, it would have been nice to know. It went up 2 ppm? From where, zero or ten?

I'd also like to know how soon or how long it takes to go from breathing car exhaust to secondhand smoke and be able to distinguish between the two sources.

Let's get down to some facts. Unless they've changed:

quote:

The current Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) permissible exposure limit (PEL) for carbon monoxide is 50 parts per million (ppm) parts of air...as an 8-hour time-weighted average (TWA) concentration [29 CFR Table Z-1].
* NIOSH REL
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has established a recommended exposure limit (REL) for carbon monoxide of 35 ppm...
* ACGIH TLV
The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) has assigned carbon monoxide a threshold limit value (TLV) of 25 ppm...
* Rationale for Limits
The NIOSH limit is based on the risk of cardiovascular effects [NIOSH
The ACGIH limit is based on the risk of elevated carboxyhemoglobin levels [ACGIH 1991, p. 229].
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So the levels aren't going to cause any nurses to keel over in the hospital, much less in a bar. Is CO even a good marker as to cigarette equivalents? It's certainly not unique to tobacco smoke and in this case it certainly is very optimistic compared to studies using nicotine.

My favorite study using nicotine, paid for and done by players in the anti-tobacco industry, found in the smokiest venue a full-time employee would need to work 5 years to 'smoke' one cigarette.

Both studies are off by a mile. And in both cases their conclusions are the same: The sky is falling. The sky is falling.

Obviously the smoking room or rooms are too small for the number of people in them. Better call the fire marshall.

Even if they were not smoking, it is obvious the room is not designed to accomodate all the people in there.

Yes, those billowing clouds of tobacco smoke--again. I've even heard some antis describe those "billowing clouds of tobacco smoke" OUTDOORS, when they say they are "forced" to walk through them on their way into a building.

quote:

Originally posted by Bruce:
Even if they were not smoking, it is obvious the room is not designed to accomodate all the people in there.

"[M]edical recovery ward where patients are struggling to survive heart attacks and cancer. Inside the ward's smoking room, patients - including lung cancer victims - puff away."

Honestly, I can't see that room having too many people in it, no matter what size it is.

Struggling to survive implies at death's door to me. That's certainly what the reporter wants me to envision. I can't see those struggling to survive unplugging all those machines they're hooked to, putting their slippers on, and shuffling over to smoking room for a smoke-billowing butt.

Then again, that's where I'd be.

quote:

launched our investigation after new research claimed that 30 people die EVERY DAY in Britain from inhaling second-hand fumes

Absolute bullshit.

quote:

Absolute bullshit.

Indeed! But since when has that ever stopped these "experts". The whole war on SHS and smoking itself has been primarily built on bullshit, and bullshit begets more bullshit. The scary thing is that the indifferent and docile public takes this BS at face value and isn't willing to look beyond the press releases. A bit off the subject but I just read an article in Reason about how bikers, through their sheer persistence and passion, are getting many state governments to repeal mandatory helmet laws. Much to the dismay of the nanny statists, they have done their homework and can show that helmets won't prevent most serious injury and death that results from motorcycle crashes; in fact, helmets may cause crashes by blocking the drivers' peripheral vision and making it hard for them to hear traffic. Whenever states try to enact helmet laws, hundreds of bikers ride into the capital and meet with lawmakers to educate them. Perhaps bikers are scarier than smokers but if we had even a fraction of their passion and persistence, I think we could finally flush the toilet that is overflowing with anti crap.

Back in May of 1994, when the Congressional Research Service analysis of the EPA report came out, Jane Gravelle of the CRS testified before Congress and said that the EPA report warning that ETS posed a cancer risk to non-smokers was not supported by the statistical evidence.

"Based on that evidence...our evaluation was that the statistical evidence does not appear to support a conclusion that there are substantial health effects from passive smoking."

The CRS analysis criticized the EPA's conclusions on a number of grounds, especially the methodology used. In addition, according to a Reuters News Service story, "Gravelle said that an alternative way of measuring the effects of environmental smoke, using the amount of a tobacco chemical found in the urine, showed the effect to be equivalent to one-tenth of a cigarette a day--leading to an estimate of 600 deaths a year instead of the 3,000 in the EPA report."
["Secondhand smoke's link to cancer disputed," The Miami Herald, 5/12/1994, p. 8A]

So even if one accepts the 600 figure, compare that to the 200-plus traffic deaths that have already occurred in Dade County, Florida so far this year, many as a result of people running red lights. Even if you were an anti, you'd have to ask yourself if you'd rather face walking through those billowing clouds of tobacco smoke or drive through any busy intersection in Dade County.

quote:

Originally posted by Wanda Hamilton:
So even if one accepts the 600 figure...you'd have to ask yourself if you'd rather face walking through those billowing clouds of tobacco smoke or drive through any busy intersection in Dade County.

And they should be told that those 600 deaths are alleged to be from living in a billowing cloud of smoke for decades, not walking through a cloud several times a day.

I still wonder why they don't bitch about car pollution. It's nonstop exposure when they're driving to those places that have billowing clouds of tobacco smoke they have to walk through for 4 seconds.

BTW, I saw new article on vehicle pollution in Europe. I don't recall the number exactly, but someone's saying 100s of thousands are dying each year from it.

And they drive fuel efficient cars and trucks over there. I don't know about their emissions requirements though.

quote:

Originally posted by squeezer:
BTW, I saw new article on vehicle pollution in Europe. I don't recall the number exactly, but someone's saying 100s of thousands are dying each year from it.

It's 310'000 according to the EU, but no verifiable source given.
Air pollution causes erly deaths

I don't know about bikers being scarier than smokers. Can you imagine the reaction to thousands of people in black leather jackets and silver studs standing outside a state legislature smoking cigarettes? Panic would rule.

As for car fumes, we raise horses. We're all for banning cars. It could boost our sales through the stratosphere. Yeah, I know that would create another kind of pollution, but it can be recycled to grow healthier, organic crops. We're trying to cover all the bases.