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You are aware, I hope, that although many of those deadly constituents of secondhand smoke are only present in quantities on the order of a few dozen nanograms per cubic meter in the air of those hotel rooms, that there are close to FOUR MILLION nanograms of ethyl alcohol in a quart of orange juice.
After all, "no safe level" IS "no safe level," right?
Oh, for God's sake! Read the link.
In fact, no level of alcohol use during pregnancy has been proven safe. Therefore, the March of Dimes recommends that pregnant women do not drink any alcohol, including beer, wine, wine coolers and liquor, throughout their pregnancy and while nursing.
In fact, no level of alcohol use during pregnancy has been proven safe. Therefore, the March of Dimes recommends that pregnant women do not drink any alcohol, including beer, wine, wine coolers and liquor, throughout their pregnancy and while nursing.
OK. So no orange juice then. 4,000,000 nanograms is obviously not = to 0 nanograms.
After all, just as with secondhand smoke, NO safe level has been established.
Is that silly? Of course it's silly. It's also silly with regard to traces of smoke traveling from a smoking room in one wing of a hotel to a nonsmoking room in another wing of a hotel.
After all, just as with secondhand smoke, NO safe level has been established.
Is that silly? Of course it's silly. It's also silly with regard to traces of smoke traveling from a smoking room in one wing of a hotel to a nonsmoking room in another wing of a hotel.
The second-hand smoke issue has been well established. No safe level. While it's impossible to eliminate some impurities in foods, that's no so with cigarette smoke. The only source is from. . . cigarettes.
The second-hand smoke issue has been well established. No safe level. While it's impossible to eliminate some impurities in foods, that's no so with cigarette smoke. The only source is from. . . cigarettes.
The source for that is usually the Surgeon Generals Report, is it not? Care to quote from it? Oddly enough it doesn't seem to exist within the body of that Report in any terms other than an observation by an asthma specialist that there's no specific minimum level for asthma triggers. Of course I may be wrong, and I imagine you've read the Report at least as carefully as I have, so perhaps you noticed it?
confusing science with politics. Comparing "risks and chemicals" has nothing at all to do with the desirability or necessity of something. Cars may be more "necessary" than smoking (although somehow I've managed to arrange my life without one due largely for my political distaste for them) but that has nothing at all to do with their relative effects upon the environment or upon peoples' health (Well, other than the fact that I'd prefer not to be depending upon a bicycle-based ambulance system if I was having a heart attack...).
And how do your cigarettes get to wherever you buy them? Not to mention your food, clothing, and anything else you consider a necessity --- or a luxury? Or does everything you buy come by horse and wagon?
So, yes, there are necessary risks and there are unnecessary risks, one of which is exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.
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And, as has been noted to her several times before, I freely admit there is no such evidence, just as there is no such evidence that there is a safe level to such carcinogens as sunshine or ethyl alcohol. If you HAVE such evidence you have chosen, for unknown and mysterious reasons, to hide it from us while continuing to demand such evidence from others in relation to tobacco smoke.
Exposure to sunshine is another one of those necessary risks, and one that can be mitigated. Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke is an unnecessary risk, and one that can be mitigated by restricting where people smoke.
Since sunshine and alcohol have no bearing on smoking in hotel rooms, there is no need for me to say anything about them whatsoever.
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Actually , the "separate room" statement comes from ASHRAE. You quoted PART of ASHRAE's statements earlier in the thread but conveniently left that part out. As to the housekeeper argument, you are deliberately ignoring the fact that it was discussed fully earlier and you were completely unable to provide proper references backing up the assertion that the intensities and durations of exposure experienced by such personnel presented any real threat to health -- either in humans or chopped up fetal rats ... or even in lazy grad students!
What's ASHRAE got to do with it? Isn't it your assertion that you should be able to smoke in a hotel room because it is not hazardous to anyone else to do so? I thought that is what this whole thread is about.
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You are still insisting that levels that are more then double, perhaps even quadruple, what was commonly measured in one of the most classic "smoke filled" situations, pressurized smoking-allowed aircraft, are equal to what you call "Low Levels." No one in their right minds will accept that assertion Suzy.
Can you offer a study showing the "safe" dose to the carcinogens of sunshine or alcohol? No. You can't. Yet you continue to speak as though tobacco smoke were somehow a "Magickal" substance that behaves differently than all other realities in our universe.
You still have not explained how you are going to smoke in a hotel room and not expose anyone else to your cigarette smoke --- whether it is more or less than the exposure inside an aircraft in which smoking is allowed.
How do you get in and out of that room without letting smoke out? How do you not expose the person who has to clean the room? How do you contain the exposure to whatever level you feel is safe? Do you smoke one cigarette per day in your room? Two? Half a pack? Inquiring minds want to know.
Cigarette smoke is not "magickal." It is just a totally unnecessary health hazard.
Think about it this way. Suppose you are correct, and the risks of exposure to ETS are insignificant. Then what harm do smoking bans do? At the worst, they make it more inconvenient for smokers to smoke. What if you are incorrect --- and the weight of the evidence is that you are --- then smoking bans prevent illness and save lives.
Which side should our legislators favor, the inconvenience of smokers, or the health of someone who has to clean a hotel room in which smoking has occurred?
Someone seems to have forgotten to answer the questions posed to her in posts 1141 and 1142, but I'll respond to the current post anyway.
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Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
And how do your cigarettes get to wherever you buy them? Not to mention your food, clothing, and anything else you consider a necessity --- or a luxury? Or does everything you buy come by horse and wagon?
I didn't feel it was necessary to extend the "bicycle-ambulance" concept in more detail, but it appears I was mistaken. Unlike some extremists in the area, I can accept some degree of moderation as a good thing.
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So, yes, there are necessary risks and there are unnecessary risks, one of which is exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. Exposure to sunshine is another one of those necessary risks, and one that can be mitigated. Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke is an unnecessary risk, and one that can be mitigated by restricting where people smoke.
And exposure to sunshine can be likewise mitigated by banning outdoor patio dining. I don't believe that the government should be coming in and making laws in either situation, but you seem to feel differently. I at least am consistent in my approaches to the two dangers ... are you?
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What's ASHRAE got to do with it? Isn't it your assertion that you should be able to smoke in a hotel room because it is not hazardous to anyone else to do so? I thought that is what this whole thread is about.
ASHRAE is the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-conditioning Engineers. My memory was that earlier in this thread you had brought them up by stating their position on ventilation. The statement however was incomplete: it neglected to note that it was not actually THEIR position that ventilation was inadequate, but rather that of what they called "cognizant health authorities." It also left out the rather important note that ASHRAE specifically noted that separated rooms in the same building were fine as long as certain quite reasonable minimum ventilation arrangements were in place. This particular misrepresentation of ASHRAE's stand is quite common among Antismokers.
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You still have not explained how you are going to smoke in a hotel room and not expose anyone else to your cigarette smoke --- whether it is more or less than the exposure inside an aircraft in which smoking is allowed.
I've never explained it because there was no need to explain it. Despite repeated requests to do so, no one here has ever been able to come up with even a single scientific study showing any harm from the levels and durations of smoke that those in nonsmoking hotel rooms would normally be exposed to. As to your "more or less" statement, if you truly believe that the air in a nonsmoking hotel room is as smoky or smokier than the air in the middle of the smoking section of a pressurized aircraft ... well ... I don't know what else to say.
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How do you get in and out of that room without letting smoke out? How do you not expose the person who has to clean the room? How do you contain the exposure to whatever level you feel is safe? Do you smoke one cigarette per day in your room? Two? Half a pack? Inquiring minds want to know.
One would get in and out of such a room without exposing anyone to any levels of smoke that anyone here has been able to show to be harmful. Ditto for the cleaning staff -- which is purely a silly concern anyway, as shown by my earlier reference to the commentary at:
although that may have been one of the things that you felt wasn't worth reading.
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Cigarette smoke is not "magickal." It is just a totally unnecessary health hazard.
If it's not "magickal" then how does ventilation have no effect on it? Nowhere else in all of ASHRAE's voluminous documentation have I ever seen them say that ventilation could not be used to make an area safe. Of course they may have been under some special pressure with regard to their tobacco smoke stance. You seem to have forgotten that we had this discussion back in post #716 where I was speaking to you:
"And you say, “You deride the heating engineers who say it cannot be done, but why would they say that if it were not true?” Actually I don’t deride the “heating engineers” at all: they were doing just fine until the antismoking lobby focused on them. Would you like me to explore some of the history of the lobbying they did in order to get that reluctant admission that ASHRAE would accede to the judgment of “cognizant authorities” that felt that tobacco smoke was too “magical” to be controlled by the systems that control virtually every other commercially produced air contaminant in the world? Maybe you’d like to talk a bit about the Society’s Environmental Tobacco Smoke Position Document Committee? You could note that it was headed not by an engineer, but by an MD, a Dr. Jonathan Samet, a figure I believe is well known for his strong support of total bans. Or maybe you’d like to talk about Richard Daynard, a lawyer who’s been involved in “tobacco litigation” for decades and who bragged that the ASHRAE statement "culminates a 13-year effort on my part to get the 1989 language...changed. I was a member of the ASHRAE committee that proposed the change." Or perhaps you could discuss the engineering backgrounds of the other MDs that made up this group of “heating engineers”? -- the number of MDs and previously active antismoking activists on their panel might indicate that.
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Think about it this way. Suppose you are correct, and the risks of exposure to ETS are insignificant. Then what harm do smoking bans do? At the worst, they make it more inconvenient for smokers to smoke.
And here is where you display a fundamental and massive disconnect from reality:
(1) The bans have caused untold economic damage, resulting in a loss of perhaps 100 billion dollars to the economy JUST of the state of California (See: ECONOMIC LOSSES DUE TO SMOKING BANS IN CALIFORNIA AND OTHER STATES ) and even more elsewhere (See the variety of studies by ECONOMISTS -- not public health grant grubbers -- on that at: KEEP ST. LOUIS FREE!: Smoking Ban Studies by PhD Economists Finding Business Loss ), and have brought about the closure of thousands of small family pubs in the US and the UK, putting people out of work and harming their families' health through economic deprivation.
(2) The bans have also caused untold social harm in the divisiveness and animosities they have created in our societies. One only has to take a quick look around the internet over the record of the last 20 years to see how the invective and the hate behind it has been cultivated and ramped up to its current state. 30 years ago there was very little division between smokers and nonsmokers ... today that division is great, and still growing.
(3) There are lots of other smaller harms out there, but the two general areas I outline above cover most of them.
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Which side should our legislators favor, the inconvenience of smokers, or the health of someone who has to clean a hotel room in which smoking has occurred?
I'd say the health of that person -- provided anyone was able to show convincing scientific research that their health was threatened. You have not been able to do so, nor has anyone else. The closest you've come to it so far in this thread was with your study that started out with two references to rats and one reference that was mis-cited by what you called "a lazy grad student." Somehow, in all the 600 references in Brains, not a single one of them has ever been called out as a mis-cite ... despite, I am sure, all having had a fair amount of scrutiny by a rather professional, very well-funded, and eminently hostile audience.
And here is where you display a fundamental and massive disconnect from reality:
(1) The bans have caused untold economic damage, resulting in a loss of perhaps 100 billion dollars to the economy JUST of the state of California (See: ECONOMIC LOSSES DUE TO SMOKING BANS IN CALIFORNIA AND OTHER STATES ) and even more elsewhere (See the variety of studies by ECONOMISTS -- not public health grant grubbers -- on that at: KEEP ST. LOUIS FREE!: Smoking Ban Studies by PhD Economists Finding Business Loss ), and have brought about the closure of thousands of small family pubs in the US and the UK, putting people out of work and harming their families' health through economic deprivation.
(2) The bans have also caused untold social harm in the divisiveness and animosities they have created in our societies. One only has to take a quick look around the internet over the record of the last 20 years to see how the invective and the hate behind it has been cultivated and ramped up to its current state. 30 years ago there was very little division between smokers and nonsmokers ... today that division is great, and still growing.
The first article written by you, a person with no scientific background, and the second link a letter to the editor.
Here are some other articles about the economic impact of smoking bans: Smoke-Free Environments Law Project (Long, refers to a number of studies)
Almost all the reviewed studies reported, on average, no net loss and sometimes net increases in bar or restaurant sales after smoking bans went into effect.11
In re: social upheaval, that is the lamest excuse I've ever heard for a smoking ban. So a bunch of internet posters rant on the net. They're still going to the bars, in Minnesota anyway.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 01-18-2012 at 06:46 PM..
Almost all the reviewed studies reported, on average, no net loss and sometimes net increases in bar or restaurant sales after smoking bans went into effect.11
In re: social upheaval, that is the lamest excuse I've ever heard for a smoking ban. So a bunch of internet posters rant on the net. They're still going to the bars, in Minnesota anyway.
Just on briefly here, so I'll just comment on your first part and have a look at your links tomorrow. Hopefully they won't be about unborn rat lungs and produced by "lazy grad students."
I was indeed the co-author of the first study. It was an economics study, not a scientific study, but that would only have become obvious if you had actually read it. You seem to have forgotten: I am not an anonymous internet poster whose qualifications are unknown. I spent two years in a doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Economics and had a full fellowship there. Perhaps you think a public health nurse might be better qualified to do a study on the economic impact of smoking bans, but I'm afraid I'd have to disagree with you.
The second link was indeed a letter to the editor, but it listed close to a dozen studies on economic effects ALSO done by economists ... with actual FULL PhDs. Again, not by proctologists, epidemiologists, or mechanical engineers... by by economists.
You, as well as anyone else here, are more than welcome to offer any specific, substantive criticisms of the economic research I did with Dave Kuneman. I believe you'll find no rat lungs and no lazy graduate students. I also don't believe you'll find any specific, substantive criticisms of any of our work: but who knows? Maybe you'll surprise me.
(1) The bans have caused untold economic damage, resulting in a loss of perhaps 100 billion dollars to the economy JUST of the state of California (See: ECONOMIC LOSSES DUE TO SMOKING BANS IN CALIFORNIA AND OTHER STATES ) and even more elsewhere (See the variety of studies by ECONOMISTS -- not public health grant grubbers -- on that at: KEEP ST. LOUIS FREE!: Smoking Ban Studies by PhD Economists Finding Business Loss ), and have brought about the closure of thousands of small family pubs in the US and the UK, putting people out of work and harming their families' health through economic deprivation.
(2) The bans have also caused untold social harm in the divisiveness and animosities they have created in our societies. One only has to take a quick look around the internet over the record of the last 20 years to see how the invective and the hate behind it has been cultivated and ramped up to its current state. 30 years ago there was very little division between smokers and nonsmokers ... today that division is great, and still growing.
"Ads are generated by Google based on other words on this page, if you do see an anti-tobacco ad, just ignore it."
But you do get the revenue from the google ads, right?
If you want to tell me something, do it here. I am not going to go to your smoking promotion web sites to read anything. Sorry.
Back on topic:
Interesting how anything that shows that smoking bans lower heart attack rates is bad research --- there must be some confounding factor, but if bars and taverns lose money after a ban, it has to be due to the ban --- not due to any other economic factor.
"Nicole Griffin, executive director for the Connecticut Restaurant Association in Hartford, told Patch the smoking ban was a big issue seven years ago. Today, bigger issues like the economy and sick pay for full-time employees have eclipsed it.
'The smoking ban is not an issue at all for restaurants,' said Griffin, whose organization has 600 members. 'When it first passed, restauranteurs were really nervous that once the ban was put into effect people wouldn't come out to eat and drink, and that's not what happened. Seven years later, customers are really happy to go out to bars and to eat and drink and not be in an atmosphere of smoke.' "
"Controlling for seasonality, unemployment, inflation, and changes in population and personal income, the study found that 'taxable retail sales (in Washington state bars and taverns) grew significantly through the fourth quarter of 2007. Our analysis suggests that the statewide smoke-free law was associated with higher revenues than would have been expected had the smoke-free law not been in effect.' ”
"The 2008 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study (issued by J.D. Power and Associates) found that, 'Nearly nine of 10 guests (89%) say they prefer a smoke free hotel environment in 2008, compared with 79% in 2006.' "
"California: 75% of interviewed California adults preferred smoke free environments in bars in 2000, compared to the 68% found after the law’s implementation in 1998. In addition, 87% of bar patrons surveyed in 2000 said they were 'as likely' or 'more likely' to visit bars since the establishments had become smoke free.
In addition, J.D. Power and Associates 2008 Southern California Indian Gaming Casino Satisfaction Study found that 85% of gamblers at Native American casinos in Southern California stated that they would prefer the casinos to be smoke free."
" 'There are very few issues of taste about which people of all ages, genders and geographic regions can agree. That’s why it catches [our] attention when an issue garners the overwhelming support of the public. And it is clear from our surveys that the vast majority of Americans prefer their restaurants, bars and clubs to be smoke free.' – Tim Zagat, CEO and Co-founder of the New York-based Zagat Survey"
With regard to California, if 87% of bar patrons in 2000 were as likely or more likely to visit bars after the ban, how did the 13% who felt differently cause the loss of those billions of dollars? And did you factor in the increased productivity from employees who were sick less often and their lower medical bills?
"Making all California workplaces, restaurants, and bars 100% smoke-free
would prevent about 39,900 youth from becoming smokers, and within five
years, save an estimated $124.73 million in lung cancer, heart attack, and
stroke costs."
As I've said before, if a bar fails it is because its management does not anticipate and make changes needed to adapt to a ban. It's not the ban that causes a bar to fail. Otherwise, all of them would go out of business. There are plenty of non-smoking customers and smokers who do not mind stepping outside to smoke. A savvy tavern owner will find a way to attract them.
"Does legislation to ban smoking reduce exposure to secondhand smoke and smoking behaviour?
There has been an increase in the number of countries and states implementing smoking policies which ban or restrict smoking in public places and workplaces. The main reason is to protect nonsmokers from the harmful health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke. Another reason is to provide a supportive environment for people who want to quit smoking. Fifty studies were included in this review. Legislative bans reduced exposure to secondhand smoke. There was no change in exposure to secondhand smoke in private cars after implementing legislative smoking bans. There was no change in self-reported SHS exposure in the home. There are fewer data measuring smoking prevalence and smoking behaviour with either no change or a downward trend reported. There is some evidence that the health of those affected by the smoking ban improved as a result of its implementation, most impressively in relation to heart attacks in hospitals."
All in all, it seems that support for smoking bans is high, even from a significant proportion of smokers, especially in areas where they have been in effect longer.
Has anyone ever died from smelling beer across a room? Yes, it smells if you stick your nose in it or in someone's face, but it doesn't harm you. Second hand smoke harms people around the smoker. Apples and oranges.
How the heck did people tolerate conditions back in 1960 when close to half of the population was smoking cigarettes?
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