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"There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke; even brief exposure can cause immediate harm."
CDC is saying something based on no science.
For women who don't smoke, and are married to none-smokers, their age-adjusted standardized annual mortality from lung cancer was 9/100k. For women married to daily smokers (who smoked less than 1 pack a day), it was 14, and for 2 packs a day, it was 18.
Now given this is women who are married to smokers, inhale the smoke everyday, probably indoors. What do you think the harm will be to you from inhaling second-smoke a few times in brief passing outdoors, such as a bus stop?
Honestly, you'd be better off worrying about all the fumes cars put out.
I lived in North Carolina some in the later 60's thru mid 70's as I was in school in Ohio. Parents moved there in the mid 60's. Within seven years both of my parents had cancer and by ten years both were dead. This was big Tobacco growing country back then.
I learned that few of the farmers or their family members smoked and still they were dying of cancer at an alarming rate. This was a rural area with sandy soil and if a thunderstorm took place, within about 15 minutes the water had drained down thru the soil and you would hardly know it had rained.
Because this was farmland most families had water wells with electric pumps. So they drank from this well water supply and bathed in it.
I was at one farmers places invited by his daughter. They showed me the barn and equipment they sprayed with and the huge number of 55 gallon barrels of poisons they mixed their spray formulations with. I was told every farmer had his own favorite formula. When the Tobacco was harvested it was taken to Winston Salem where 11 more chemicals were sprayed on it as it was processed into cigarettes.
I guess no one at the time was realizing that these chemicals were getting into the underground water aquifer and as this was rural area there was no city water utility to assure a safe water supply.
In the early 80's I spoke with a fellow who worked at a chewing Tobacco company who explained how one of the chemicals they put in the chewing Tobacco was to cause salivation of the mouth. So if a consumer spit out a chew, within a few minutes they would be salivating for more Tobacco. I was also told that one of those 11 chemicals added for cigarette production was a principle ingredient in gun powder. So even if you weren't smoking a cigarette, it would continue to burn itself down to the filter.
The last time I was down in North Carolina looking thru the old neighborhood that huge Tobacco industry looked like it had all vanished. It had been so beautiful there before and had the feel of the old south that I had seen when traveling to visit family in Texas.
I'm not urging anyone to stop smoking or chewing, just offering information they may not be aware of. Information I stumbled onto. After the Korean War Tobacco farming went to using poison spray opposed to hiring people to pull the Tobacco caterpillars of the leaves and pinch the heads off them and drop them into a bucket. In those days a farmers paid their laborers a bounty for each of those heads.
The incidence of cancer from smoking or chewing then wasn't so high as this has been explained to me.
In the early 50's there was a cigarette brand known as "Kent" who claimed their filters contained 32,000 fibers and were nearly cancer proof. But some of the early Tobacco law suits were filed against "Kent" as people who consumed that brand were contracting an aggressive cancer known as mesothelioma.
Quote:
A San Francisco jury awarded Milton Horowitz $2 million in 1995 to compensate financial losses and the pain and suffering his mesothelioma diagnosis caused. Horowitz smoked Kent cigarettes during the years the toxic filters were produced, and as a result he developed the rare asbestos-related cancer in 1994
Maybe off-topic but in March 2020 I was waiting in line at Customer Service at a neighborhood supermarket. The lady was asking the cashier for advice on which brands of cigarettes were "strongest." The cashier said "I don't smoke, I don't know." She turned to me for advice on cigarette brands.
I said, "it never occurred to me to smoke and given what's going on (with Covid-19), smoking is one of the biggest risk factors. I implore you not to buy a pack. Please, I care, do it for me." She was a total stranger. She took back her $10.85 and left, though cigarettes were on sale.
There seems statistically to have been huge success in terminating the habit of smoking. As someone who was raised post WWII when literally everybody was smoking, I would have never believed it could be possible.
I also suspect there are more covert smokers than statistics indicate. I remember when the percentage was down to about twenty percent in Minnesota and I was surprised it was that high because I never or rarely saw anyone smoking. When dealing with addictions there will always be hidden behavior.
Minnesota had a lot of success not only via education but also by social disapproval and stigma. It was ugly but it worked.
I dunno, going to make a guess. Maybe no one wants to touch obesity because it's so pervasive even in our health system. The clinic I go to has a lot of overweight staff.
Did the cessation of smoking contribute to the obesity epidemic?
Where else are you going to focus? Alcohol? We're already changing our attitude on mood-altering chemicals but alcohol may be the black sheep of the happy hour family.
It will be interesting to see where Biden's ideas on drinking go. Major backlash among the middle-aged and older crowd, I suspect.
We hear a lot of people saying prohibition doesn't work but it seems to have been relatively successful regarding smoking.
Two more things about the anti-tobacco campaign that may have given it a boost: An increase in sensitivities to chemicals in the population and increased pollution. And another guess - was this a way to decrease the power of the Republican movers and shakers? A large amount of their money was being made by the sale of tobacco. Was the motivation as much political as it was for health reasons?
Where does political power lay in regard to obesity/alcohol dependence? What are the connections? Who benefits?
Yes, I think it's one of the causes, as well as the crazy food pyramid being pushed out in the 70s-80s where you were supposed to have 10 servings of carbs as the foundation for your diet and everything was supposed to be low fat (and thus packed with sugar).
Although only about 10% of US residents smoke, some in the medical field talk as if smoking is the nation's biggest health problem. Why? Maybe they are a disproportionate number of the patients?
Who?
By FAR not even CLOSE the entire medical community agrees the Obesity/Metabolic Syndrome pandemic IS the WORLD'S biggest health problem.
You can't even quantify the dollars it's so ENORMOUS.
Meanwhile, sure they'd be disproportionate. And often they can be both which are Lifestyle Medicine issues.
Our doctor told my late husband the weight would kill him fast and the smoking will kill him slow.
He died at 43. Smoking and carrying too much weight.
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Well, smokers in general have a higher risk tolerance. They will trade off the risk for the pleasure.
I never enjoyed smoking much. I only smoked because it was so GD addicting and hard to stop. I always recognized that any "enjoyment" I got out of it was merely because it stopped the craving momentarily, and that felt good...for a few minutes.
With a quick Google I am told that Heart Disease is America's biggest killer. Which is preventable with lifestyle, diet, and medication.
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