Resonable conclusions about second hand smoke

I would first like to say that I'm not advocating smoking in any way. I realize the health risk of smoking cigarettes and hope to quit one day. I am going to use the controversy of second hand smoke to illustrate how we're being manipulated by the media and government on a massive scale.

Lets say I lit a cigarette in a room full of babies. Think about how that makes you feel for a second. HMMMMM I can almost feel the outrage. Lets say in that same room I lit a fancy scented candle, out of reach of the babies of course. Most of you wouldn't blink an eye. Here is a copy pasted list of the emmisions of that pretty smelling candle: Candle soot was typically less than 1 µm, contained up to 66% elemental carbon and carried numerous adsorbed organic compounds including dibutyl phthalate, diethyl phthalate, toluene and styrene. Volatile organic compound emissions included benzene, styrene, toluene, ethyl benzene, naphthalene, acetylaldehyde, benzaldehyde, benzene, ethanol, and 2-butanone (methyl ethyl ketone). Analysis for lead revealed some candles emitted significant quantities of aerosolized lead during combustion.

Lead!! Benezene!! Styrene!! What the hell! Many of these chemicals I've been trained to transport and all the ones I recognise here require respirators, gloves, ect to handle. Especially benezene a known carcinogen. Heres the page: [link to www.lead.org.au] if you want to read further it compares candle emissions to diesel exaust.

What is the floor cleaned with that those babies are crawling on? Many hose hold cleaners have carcinogens that can be absorbed through the skin. [link to www.organicconsumers.org] Air fresheners? [link to energyfanatics.com]

I could go on all day. The point is why is second hand smoke is demonized to the point that I would get my ass kicked if I lit a cigarette in a room full of babies or any public place for that matter. Is it any worse that any of these other things? Not really, and I can prove it...... We'll I can prove it to people who don't drink the coolaid.

One of the major studies that the anti-secondhand smoke crowd cites as proof is an EPA study done back in 1992. Federal Judge William Osteen said this about the report: "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."

Of course this is just one of the studies done on second hand smoke but it proves bias by a government, supposedly, scientific study. The findings of this study were vacated by court in 1998 but anti-smoking groups still reference the study as proof. In this study the RR or realitive risk was 1.19 a paper doesn't even get published unless its 3 or more.

"As a general rule of thumb, we are looking for a relative risk of 3 or more before accepting a paper for publication." - Marcia Angell, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine"

"My basic rule is if the relative risk isn't at least 3 or 4, forget it." - Robert Temple, director of drug evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration.

"Relative risks of less than 2 are considered small and are usually difficult to interpret. Such increases may be due to chance, statistical bias, or the effect of confounding factors that are sometimes not evident." - The National Cancer Institute

"An association is generally considered weak if the odds ratio [relative risk] is under 3.0 and particularly when it is under 2.0, as is the case in the relationship of ETS and lung cancer." - Dr. Kabat, IAQC epidemiologist

Most of the studies have a RR of less than three and most of those are suspect. So why would those studies get published and the media exaggerate the risk?? I've got a pretty good idea but lets look into this a little deeper. This web site links to tons of sutdies that show no risk or very little risk of illness by second hand smoke. [link to www.forces.org]

Even if the study were correct in favor of the ban smoking crowd a relative risk of 1.19 is .19 over the base line thats a 19% increase in odds of getting a smoking related disease over a non-smoker an actual smoker only has a 19% chance of getting a smoking related disease over a non smoker so whats the percent chance of getting lung cancer for the whole population smokers and non smokers? Less than one 0.1% according to the CDC (I had to do the math) but here's the link [link to www.cdc.gov]

Why would anyone go crazy over a .119% chance of getting cancer?? You take a bigger chance just driving to work.

To put things into perspective the odds of getting shot at the Superbowl were 1199 to 1 and the odds of experencing rapid acceleration in a Toyota is 13500 to 1. The odds of getting cancer from second hand smoke is almost nil.


I could hammer on this all day but the point is we are being manupulated so powerful crooks can get rich. Do you think the extra cigarette taxs actually go to offset the medical cost of smokers? It goes into a black hole and comes out the other side in the form of bailouts for cocksuckers who want all your tax money. They use every little dirty trick in the book to wring more money out of us and get more powerful in the process. The nonsmoker and even anti-smoker should be outraged at this. Its only a matter of time before we have a fast food tax, because it make us fat, and we need the tax to offset the outrageous medical cost from the "epidemic" of obesity.

The lies we are fed are warping our minds with crazy distorted realities that will compell a mother or father to be outraged at someone smoking around their children and then go buy those same precious children a skateboard they can ride in the street or a trampoline. Don't get me wrong kids need to ride skate boards and jump on trampolines. I'm just making the point that the powers that be use the save the children mantra to push agendas and scare people and people buy it with out even checking the price.