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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (52422)	10/24/2006 4:46:38 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

>>Proving that "second hand smoke kills" would be an extraordinarily difficult challenge. Given that the damage is insidious and occurs over a very long time, a scientist would have to study subjects over a period of years (a longitudinal study). During all this time, the scientist would have to control for, somehow, all the extraneous health hazards that subjects might have been exposed to. Only with such rigorous controls could smoke be isolated as the definitive cause of health damage. The task is just about impossible.<< J.C. - I agree with you that it's not a good thing when science is bent to political ends. In the case of second hand smoke, however, while a double-blind controlled test may be nearly impossible, that doesn't mean that no meaningful conclusions can be drawn from the data that is available. From just the standpoint of common sense, one thing I don't see is how people can agree that smoke drawn into the lungs directly through a filter is harmful, but somehow the smoke that one breathes in through the air in a room full of smokers supposedly isn't. Sure, the smoke inhaled by the smoker is more concentrated. But there is plenty of science to support the fact that some substances can be harmful when inhaled in very low concentrations. As for studies being done in homes where there are smokers and non-smokers, they do show increased risk of disease for the non-smokers, as you acknowledge. You say that this proves only that "intense and constant" exposure is harmful. What those studies show is that there is a level of exposure where harm occurs. What those studies don't show is exactly where the threshold is. We know that each individual is different. One person may smoke two or three cigarettes a day and die of lung cancer (as my step father did), while another may smoke three packs a day and live to be 90. There is no one danger threshold of exposure for every person. Anyway, in an average home of smokers and non-smokers, how many people will be smoking at any one moment? Three or four at the most? But in the bars and restaurants I worked in in the early 80's, there would be twenty, thirty or forty cigarettes burning at any one time. I'd wager the concentration of smoke in the air was at least equal to, and probably much greater than what existed in my home as I was growing up with two smoking parents. The danger may have been exaggerated. On the other hand, given the difficulty of absolutely proving the point one way or another, how do you know it hasn't in fact been understated? - Allen