My fellow ScienceBloggers Orac and MarkH have gotten entangled in arguments with some rather... how to phrase this?... enthusiastic folks arguing against smoking as a cause of cancer, and particularly against the idea that second-hand smoke could possibly be harmful.
Normally, I'd try to avoid this conflict - the link between smoking and cancer is so incredibly well-demonstrated that it's pointless to even debate it; and numerous studies have shown that while it's much smaller that the risk of smoking, there is a danger from exposure to second-hand smoke. There are rabid denialists in almost any debate, and there's no point arguing with them - they're not convincing anyone, and they'll never be convinced themselves.
But something came up in these debates, pointed out by MarkH, which is a wonderful example of a particular kind bad math - the abuse of numbers and statistics to try to make data appear to say something quite different than what it actually says.
This comes from a letter to the editor of a journal that published a paper about the dangers of second-hand smoke. The site doesn't appear to support direct linkage to a specific letter, so you'll need to search for the 28 April 2005 letter by Michael McFadden. Here's what McFadden said:
Two points raised in the Rapid Responses immediately prior to this come together with a question I have written about for several years. USDHHS (U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services) has classified Ethyl Alcohol as a carcinogen. To be true, they have only classified it as such when it is "consumed," presumably in liquid form, but alcohol is a very volatile liquid. (1)
A cigarette emits roughly a half milligram of active Class A carcinogens with the most significant in terms of weight being benzene at 3/10ths of a milligram. A standard martini releases roughly one full gram of the Class A carcinogen ethyl alcohol into the air in the space of an hour: an amount equal to 2,000 cigarettes. You can see this for yourself most clearly if you pour a large shot (48 grams) of grain alcohol into a martini glass and set it someplace ventilated and safe for two days. When you come back it will be gone. If the cat didn't drink it the alcohol went into the air and was breathed and ingested by any who wandered through the room during that period.
Some might claim that DHHS specified "consumption" of alcohol in order to rule out any airborne effects, but to say that mucosal cancers from liquid alcohol do not imply mucosal cancers from evaporated alcohol makes an absolute mockery of the old "tar in acetone painted on mouse skin" proofs that medical scientists were so fond of in the 1950s and 60s.
As Dr. Lee, in the Response immediately above this one, points out: "Logic dictates that if cigarette smoke is harmful when inhaled into the lungs of smokers then the same smoke when inhaled into the lungs of non- smokers will also be harmful. To argue otherwise would be foolhardy." People like myself argue that the dilution of that smoke, particularly in modern venues with far better ventilation than generally reflected in epidemiological studies based on exposures stretching back 30 or 40 years, make a huge difference.
Nonsmokers in well designed and ventilated bars and restaurants would normally inhale no more than a few micrograms of active Class A carcinogenic material from cigarettes. In exceptionally well designed and ventilated venues the total amount would probably be measurable only in nano- and picograms. The alcohol case is clearly far stronger: nondrinkers would be likely to inhale milligrams rather than mere micrograms in drinking allowed venues... particularly if smoking is banned and ventilation levels reduced.
It's basically true that ethyl alchohol is a carcinogen. (The alchohol itself isn't carcinogenic, but one of the breakdown products of metabolizing alchohol is.) So he's right about that. And ethyl alchohol is volatile, and it does get into the air. That's true as well. How much alchohol is an average patron going to inhale in a bar? I can't say that I know; so we'll assume that McFadden is being entirely honest in his estimate that a martini sitting on a bar releases one full gram of alchohol into the atmosphere per hour, compared to 1/2 a milligram released by a single cigarette. To balance things out, let's say that the alchohol is releasing fumes into the air for the same amount of time as the cigarette, and that a cigarette lasts for 10 minutes. So then a martini releases 1/6 of a gram of alchohol (about 170 milligrams) in the time it takes for a cigarette to release 1/2 of a milligram; so there's a ratio of about 330 times as much alchohol released into the air as carcinogens from smoke; so second-hand inhalers of the carcinogens will inhale 330 times as much carcinogenic substance from the martini as from the cigarette! My goodness, that makes it sound like the alchohol is much more dangerous that the cigarette, doesn't it?
Except... McFadden is deliberately leaving something out, to make it look as if statistics support him. Not all carcinogens are equal. I did a bit of research, and found a table of carcinogenic potency, which summarizes the results of tests on rodents of a huge number of carcinogenic substances, and records the dosage necessary, in terms of milligrams of carcinogen per kilogram of body weight, to produce cancers (using a measure called the harmonic mean TD50). From another site, I got the names of a few of the carcinogens in cigarette smoke. Then I went and checked the numbers on dosage for the carcinogens in cigarettes versus alchohol. Here's the result:
| Substance | TD50 |
|---|---|
| benzo(a)pyrine | 0.956 |
| 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanol | 0.09 |
| N-nitrosonornicotine | 10.8 |
| nitrosonornicotine | 1.18 |
| alchohol | 9110 |
This selection of carcinogens in cigarette smoke range from 850 to 100,000 times more carcinogenic than alchohol. So the same period of exposure to equivalent time-dosages of cigarette smoke versus inhaled alchohol results in risks from the cigarette carcinogens ranging from about 2 1/2 times to more than 300 times greater than alchohol. And that's making the generous assumption that alchohol inhalation is as dangerous as alchohol ingestion (which the cancer figures specifically note is risk for ingested alchohol), and that alchohol lingers in the air the same way that smoke does.
It's abuse of statistics, plain and simple. By deliberately comparing quantities of potential carcinogens without including their strength, McFadden is comparing apples to oranges in order to make it appear that the risks of second-hand smoke in miniscule.
Comments
I recall Ronald Fisher himself argued against smoking as a cause of lung cancer. At the time I think he argued they were misusing his methods and the results did not support the conclusion, but that is not exactly the same as saying smoking does not cause lung cancer.
Posted by: George Larson | July 19, 2007 1:48 PM
Similar bad math unfortunately goes on today when people talk about economics. They compare CPI numbers now to CPI numbers in the 70s or 60s to compare inflation. Except that methodology for measuring CPI changed radically in the 90s (shift from arithmetic mean to geometric mean, introduction of substitutions). So people are comparing numbers that do not necessarily represent the same thing.
Posted by: Walker | July 19, 2007 2:40 PM
I think you might be opening yourself for attack by not posting volumes of the carcinogens in cigarettes and whether or not all of those are released into the air. For example, benzo(a)pyrine may take far less to cause cancer, but how much of it is released into the air. While its potency may be orders of magnitude higher than alcohol, its volume may be orders of magnitude lower.
Disclaimer: I'm just filling a hole in the argument, not taking the other side.
Posted by: Brent | July 19, 2007 2:55 PM
It looks like McFadden is using a tactic reminiscent of anti-nuclear activists, that of pretending barely-radioactive materials are as dangerous as highly-radioactive materials.
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger | July 19, 2007 2:56 PM
Bravo, Mark!
I actually was going to take on that bit of craziness myself. I'm glad you made it so I didn't have to. By the way, McFadden is trying to defend his nonsense back on my blog.
Posted by: Orac | July 19, 2007 3:09 PM
DOUCHEBAG
8=====================D
Posted by: Douchebag | July 19, 2007 4:49 PM
Oh, rarely have I seen so eloquent a rebuttal of a mathematical analysis. Bravo!
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | July 19, 2007 4:55 PM
I think the link to the list of carcinogen names is missing the URL.
Posted by: Brian Jaress | July 19, 2007 5:42 PM
I nominate Mr. Douchebag for the Fields. That's... simply brilliant.
Posted by: Xanthir, FCD | July 19, 2007 5:54 PM
I can't seem to find any research that shows that measurable amounts of ethanol can be detected in the blood of humans exposed to fumes. It actually seems patently ridiculous. Yes, ethanol is somewhat volatile, and can cause cancer, but in a mechanism completely different from cigarettes. The damage of ethanol, when consumed orally over the long term, is neurologic, hepatologic, and, indirectly, carcinogenic, by causing cirrhosis...the rapid cell turnover and damage of cirrhosis can lead to liver cancer, especially if combined with one of the chronic hepatitis viruses, but most people who die of alcohol consumption die of either acute alcohol toxicity from a huge ingestion, or from cirrhosis...not a cancer.
Of course, most smokers die of cardiovascular or non-oncologic lung disease before they have a chance to die of cancer, but it is a more direct carcinogen than ethanol.
Posted by: PalMD | July 19, 2007 6:59 PM
Heh... finding this trail of blogginess makes me think back to the comment (by Mark H? Orac?) yesterday or so about the "Crank Bat Signal" summons.
Mark C., no dishonesty involved at all. I was unaware of the existence of the tables and information you post above and will examine it. At the moment though I haven't even gotten back to the denialism/insolence blogs where I believe I am both awaiting some responses and owe a few.
I noticed your selection of carcinogens though and am wondering, since you seem to be aware of such things, why you did not choose the proper carcinogens for comparison: i.e. the unique Class A carcinogens in tobacco smoke and their quantities. See the 10th IARC report at http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/roc/toc10.html#search (I believe there's an 11th by this point but don't have the URL handy) and the SGR '89 or '06 for particulars.
I think if you do so, and THEN apply your analysis, you may come up with a somewhat different conclusion (you may not also... I haven't done that analysis myself).
I also wonder why you seem to think that tobacco smoke in the air would behave so much differently than alcohol vapors. Granted one is a gas form and one a particulate, but I believe that very small particulate matter behaves aerodynamically in ways quite similar to gas. Do you have evidence or reason to believe to the contrary?
And a final note: I believe your and your blog friends are consistently missing the MAIN point I was making: it *IS* crazy to worry about such exposures to alcohol, and it is similarly crazy to worry about such exposures to secondary smoke. You can argue for a degree of difference, even a *great* degree of difference, but as the Surgeon General has so painstakingly pointed out, "there is no safe level of exposure" to carcinogens. So was he lying? Or is it dangerous to be near you while you're sipping your Beefeater?
Or *is* there perhaps a "safe level" in normal parlance that is simply ignored and twisted by the antismoking lobby?
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Posted by: Michael J. McFadden | July 19, 2007 9:21 PM
Joseph H. stated, "It looks like McFadden is using a tactic reminiscent of anti-nuclear activists, that of pretending barely-radioactive materials are as dangerous as highly-radioactive materials."
Funny you should say that Joe. If you've visited my site you will have seen that indeed, I have a history as an antinuclear activist (although, to be quite honest, I was never all that worried about nuclear *power*... I was a bit more concerned about the bombs.) It was that history, and my work in bicycle activism, that helped to open my eyes to the propaganda involved in the antismoking movement. The difference is that the antinuke folks and the anticar folks NEVER had access to the amount of money that the antismokers have at their beck and call.
In the year 2001 the American Medical Association pegged the Tobacco Control folks at having 883 Million dollars (JUST from the state financial allocations!) to spend on their nonsense. When I was writing Brains back in 2003, they had the money for ten full minutes a day of propaganda commercials on nationwide MTV.
I very consciously try to avoid playing those propaganda and word games. A good quarter of the main body of my book is spent in their analysis. I've answered Mark C's contention with a fairly lengthy post on two other blogs where he's posted it and I *think* that I have the same answer pending on this one for moderation.
Unlike the authors of antismoking studies, I'm quite willing to stand by what I say and defend it... I'm also quite willing to admit when and where I might be wrong.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Posted by: Michael J. McFadden | July 19, 2007 10:52 PM
Evidently my initial posting either didn't take or I posted twice to another in this mess o' blogs. Mark, here you are...
======
Heh... finding this trail of blogginess makes me think back to the comment (by Mark H? Orac?) yesterday or so about the "Crank Bat Signal" summons.
Mark C., no dishonesty involved at all. I was unaware of the existence of the tables and information you post above and will examine it. At the moment though I haven't even gotten back to the denialism/insolence blogs where I believe I am both awaiting some responses and owe a few.
I noticed your selection of carcinogens though and am wondering, since you seem to be aware of such things, why you did not choose the proper carcinogens for comparison: i.e. the unique Class A carcinogens in tobacco smoke and their quantities. See the 10th IARC report at http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/roc/toc10.html#search (I believe there's an 11th by this point but don't have the URL handy) and the SGR '89 or '06 for particulars.
I think if you do so, and THEN apply your analysis, you may come up with a somewhat different conclusion (you may not also... I haven't done that analysis myself).
I also wonder why you seem to think that tobacco smoke in the air would behave so much differently than alcohol vapors. Granted one is a gas form and one a particulate, but I believe that very small particulate matter behaves aerodynamically in ways quite similar to gas. Do you have evidence or reason to believe to the contrary?
And a final note: I believe your and your blog friends are consistently missing the MAIN point I was making: it *IS* crazy to worry about such exposures to alcohol, and it is similarly crazy to worry about such exposures to secondary smoke. You can argue for a degree of difference, even a *great* degree of difference, but as the Surgeon General has so painstakingly pointed out, "there is no safe level of exposure" to carcinogens. So was he lying? Or is it dangerous to be near you while you're sipping your Beefeater?
Or *is* there perhaps a "safe level" in normal parlance that is simply ignored and twisted by the antismoking lobby?
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Posted by: Michael J. McFadden | July 20, 2007 3:11 AM
mr. mcfadden, i'm curious. how exactly does the funds available to a certain party and their potential level of 'propaganda' have any bearing on whether the message is right or wrong? perhaps you would like to take a shot at something like live8? they made a lot of money too. they were the largest watched event planetwide. so they should be liars as well, yes?
oh and further, for all we know, 800+ million dollars is petty change in the business. incomplete math for the win.
Posted by: Anonymous | July 20, 2007 7:08 AM
Speaking of equivalent-time dosages, secondhand smoking is perhaps more dangerous than what the filter-protected smoker ingests.
In any case, IIRC there have been court cases here where persons have gotten compensation for lung cancers that can be directly traced to their work in former smoking environments. So it seems the casual connection can be fairly ascertained besides epidemic studies.
The most damaging to McFaddens argument is IMO that alcohol is secondarily carcinogenic and AFAIK most airborne light alcohols are vented efficiently by the lungs before they get metabolized.
Smoke particles OTOH are vented within 15 minutes. (Proposed time limit between smoking and entry to clean rooms because at that time excess particles become immeasurable compared to non-smokers.) But my guess is they mostly stick and/or in any case leave much of the tar, or we wouldn't see smokers get lung cancers.
And the smoke particles, often highly carcinogenic as such, by this venting often ends up in other persons lungs. Smoking is a gift that goes on giving.
Brent:
Those numbers can be extracted from McFadden's claims in the quote. But I don't think the 60 % benzene makes it much better. The same site gives benzene carcinogenic TD50 potencies of 169 (77.5) mg/kg/day for rat (mouse). Sure, you can calculate another mean. But the caveat that tar and alcohols differ remains.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 20, 2007 8:16 AM
Lets not, huh? At that rate of evaporation, a typical UK measure of spririts (35ml, 40% by vol) would contain no alcohol whatsoever after approximately 14 hours. I find that extremely difficult to believe. Leave a whisky out overnight, and it's still whisky in the morning - I can confidently assert this from personal experience.
Posted by: Dunc | July 20, 2007 8:30 AM
I've just put 36 grams of gin in a beaker in my study. (No-one in the house drinks it and we don't have any cats.) I'll keep you posted.
Posted by: Stephen | July 20, 2007 10:45 AM
Michael McFadden:
So what you're saying is:
* You're a serious researcher of the link between smoke and cancer.
* You've submitted scientific papers on the matter, which were rejected
entirely for political reasons.
and
* You're completely unfamiliar with the idea that the degree of
carcinogenicity varies for different substances.
Do you really expect anyone to take you seriously when you
say things like that? If you're not even familiar with something as
totally trivial as dose/response variation, then it's pretty much impossible
that you've written a remotely credibly scientific analysis of the health impacts of second-hand smoke. The key question about
second hand smoke is whether the quantity of dangerous substances in
cigarette smoke inhaled by a non-smoker is sufficient to cause harm. If you don't even understand the idea of different quantities of different substances having different degrees of effect, you simple can't have done
the analysis - because you show no comprehension of *the* most fundamental thing that you'd need to analyze.
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | July 20, 2007 11:28 AM
I will try to answer folks briefly and to the point here:
Anonymous wrote, " mr. mcfadden, i'm curious. how exactly does the funds available to a certain party and their potential level of 'propaganda' have any bearing on whether the message is right or wrong? ...
(It doesn't.)
oh and further, for all we know, 800+ million dollars is petty change in the business. incomplete math for the win.
(Please drop 1/1,000th of your next petty change drop off at my door. Thank you.)
T. Larsson wrote, "Speaking of equivalent-time dosages, secondhand smoking is perhaps more dangerous than what the filter-protected smoker ingests."
("Speaking of equivalent-concentration dosages, secondhand smoking is probably about 1/1,000th as dangerous as what the filter-protected smoker ingests... or less.")
In any case, IIRC there have been court cases here where persons have gotten compensation for lung cancers that can be directly traced to their work in former smoking environments. So it seems the casual connection can be fairly ascertained besides epidemic studies.
(The biggest case in this area was the Florida flight stewardesses case. That was settled, not decided, for $300 million of which nothing at all went to the "persons". If my memory serves me correctly I believe Florida law was rewritten specifically in order to make it impossible for Big Tobacco to walk away on that one. In any event, science usually does not establish "causal connections" on the basis of a ruling by one or two judges or juries or such... unless your name is Galileo.)
The most damaging to McFaddens argument is IMO that alcohol is secondarily carcinogenic and AFAIK most airborne light alcohols are vented efficiently by the lungs before they get metabolized.
(I'm not sure what you mean by "vented efficiently"? Can you supply a reference on that?)
Smoke particles OTOH are vented within 15 minutes. (Proposed time limit between smoking and entry to clean rooms because at that time excess particles become immeasurable compared to non-smokers.) But my guess is they mostly stick and/or in any case leave much of the tar, or we wouldn't see smokers get lung cancers.
(I'm not clear on the "vented efficiently" by the lungs statement and how it relates to "clean rooms". I would think that air changes per hour would be a more important measure than a simple time element.)
And the smoke particles, often highly carcinogenic as such, by this venting often ends up in other persons lungs. Smoking is a gift that goes on giving.
(Some of them do obviously. Under decent ventilation conditions probably less than 1/1,000th. I don't know if that qualifies as "often".)
Dunc quoted someone:
#16we'll assume that McFadden is being entirely honest in his estimate that a martini sitting on a bar releases one full gram of alchohol into the atmosphere per hour
And then wrote, "Lets not, huh? At that rate of evaporation, a typical UK measure of spririts (35ml, 40% by vol) would contain no alcohol whatsoever after approximately 14 hours. I find that extremely difficult to believe. Leave a whisky out overnight, and it's still whisky in the morning - I can confidently assert this from personal experience."
(Dunc, you or anyone else here is MORE than welcome to replicate the very simple experiment outlined in my BMJ response. Given the feelings and competence exhibited by many of the posters here I'd be quite surprised if no one has already tried it. And I'm quite sure that if someone DID try it and found I was being dishonest we would have heard about it louder than Gabriel's call. Remember the conditions: standard ventilation/temperature room, martini glass, 48g (1 large shot) of grain alcohol (95% Everclear will do fine, 100 proof vodka MAY still have some largely water remnant at the end of 48 hours... give it a try if you want.)
(And, re an earlier post about 10 minutes per smoke vs. an hour for my martini cutting the 2,000 times down to 330: that holds true as a comparison ONLY if you gulp your martini in 10 minutes and then sit there with an empty glass and hold your breath and don't perspire for the next 50: remember, once that alcohol goes into your body your body starts getting rid of it too. The excretory addition to the equation is something I didn't bother bringing up in the original model since I have neither the funds nor the expertise to measure it.)
Stephen quotes and notes:
#17At that rate of evaporation, a typical UK measure of spririts (35ml, 40% by vol) would contain no alcohol whatsoever after approximately 14 hours. I find that extremely difficult to believe. Leave a whisky out overnight, and it's still whisky in the morning - I can confidently assert this from personal experience.
I've just put 36 grams of gin in a beaker in my study. (No-one in the house drinks it and we don't have any cats.) I'll keep you posted.
(When I was staying in England I noticed pubs seemed to sometimes offer 35ml and sometimes 50ml in their standardized pours. Remember though: unless you've got the money/equipment for some fancy measuring you won't be able to determine the percentage of alcohol remaining: that's why I recommend grain for the experiment. Of course if the gin DOES completely evaporate even though it's half composed of less volatile water, then my point is doubly made.)
#18
Mark C wrote, "Michael McFadden: So what you're saying is:
* You're a serious researcher of the link between smoke and cancer.
(No. I am a serious, though completely unfunded and unaffiliated researcher, of the relationship between secondary smoke exposure and cancer/heartdisease etc. I am also a researcher concerned with the social movement surrounding and promoted by the perception of that relationship.)
* You've submitted scientific papers on the matter, which were rejected
entirely for political reasons.
(No. I've submitted one scientific paper on the matter, which I believe has so far been rejected largely for political reasons. I wouldn't be presumptuous enough to say "entirely" as I am clearly not well-experienced in the area of publication of research papers and it is possible our paper could reasonably be rejected on non-political grounds. I believe the opposite was more the case here though.)
and
* You're completely unfamiliar with the idea that the degree of
carcinogenicity varies for different substances.
(No. I am not completely unfamiliar with it. I do not claim to be a full-time and highly-trained medical expert however and was not familiar with the comparative figures/table you brought up. You evidently are however, and I am awaiting your findings regarding the 7 recognized Class A Carcinogens in secondary smoke. I do not rule out that your contention might be valid, but I'd like to see the evidence.)
Do you really expect anyone to take you seriously when you
say things like that? If you're not even familiar with something as
totally trivial as dose/response variation,
(er... do you mean like Surgeon General Carmona's "there is no safe level" ? Or the claims about 30 minute heart attacks and vasodilation based upon exposure levels ranging from 300% to 2,000% the average in the middle of smoking sections on pressurized aircraft? Seriously, I think I have made quite clear in my writings that I am aware of and concerned about dose/response variation. If you enter you'll get 21 hits.)
then it's pretty much impossible
that you've written a remotely credibly scientific analysis of the health impacts of second-hand smoke.
(If you find any defects with my analyses please state what they are. You have indeed pointed out one possible defect and I'm awaiting a fuller statement of it. **HOWEVER** it is important to remember the core of what has brought us here today: the fact that the Helena/Pueblo studies did NOT examine the effects of smoking bans on nonsmokers and yet have VERY consistently and willfully represented by the authors and by responsible authorities as having done so; and the fact that the journals responsible for the initial publications of both have failed to offer a reasonable podium for a responsible scientific countering of their earlier misguided publications.)
The key question about
second hand smoke is whether the quantity of dangerous substances in
cigarette smoke inhaled by a non-smoker is sufficient to cause harm. If you don't even understand the idea of different quantities of different substances having different degrees of effect, you simple can't have done
the analysis - because you show no comprehension of *the* most fundamental thing that you'd need to analyze.
(See above note re: "the dose makes the poison.")
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Posted by: Michael J. McFadden | July 20, 2007 2:56 PM
McFadden:
You're pulling the old classic crackpot scheme. You put forth a totally bogus argument; it gets refuted; and you then insist that it's everyone else's responsibility to provide you with the evidence.
You claim to understand that the dose makes the poison. But you still persist in this idiotic alchohol argument - which, as I showed in this post, is built on nonsense. It's your argument - you're the one comparing alchohol inhalation to smoke inhalation without considering relative carcinogenicity. Your argument is *wrong* because it leaves out that crucial factor - which you even *admit* in your repetitions of "the dose makes the poison". But you claim it's someone else's job to do the work to fix the flaw in your argument.
Nope, doesn't work that way. You made a nonsensical comparison; I showed evidence for why it's nonsensical. You want to claim that my refutation of your argument is wrong, it's *your* job to do the work. I even provided you with a link to the relevant statistics. (Which, incidentally, took me under 30 seconds to find with google; but you, competent researcher that you claim to be, have never even bothered to look for that data. You've been recycling that argument about alchohol vs. smoking for at least a couple of years, and yet you've never even tried to check an *obviously* important factor in your argument.)
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | July 20, 2007 3:13 PM
I gather that any further figures are largely superfluous for the discussion. However after 5 hours there is as yet no measurable evaporation from my gin (i.e. a gram at most), whereas according to McFadden 5 grams of alcohol plus an unknown amount of water should have evaporated. I'll keep you posted.
Posted by: Stephen | July 20, 2007 4:19 PM
McFadden:
I will answer those questions where you have not or only slightly misread or misstated my previous comment:
Thanks for correcting my mistake, I meant equivalent-concentration dosages.
So you are saying that non-filter cigarettes gives less cancer than filtered cigarettes? Where are your references?
I think you got it backwards - the court case here only got through [Sweden, not a litigious culture, fixed law and regulations surrounding work] because they could establish causality medically. IIRC since the cancer were exclusively tied to tobacco smoking.
And you do know that comparing yourself and your case with Galileo scores high on the crackpot index, right? 40 crackpot points for you.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 20, 2007 4:53 PM
Mark, hmm... usually if I try to refute someone's argument I provide the evidence for that refutation rather than simply say, "Hey, you should go check these other things yourself!" I wonder how far I would have gotten with the Helena authors using that approach? Doubt if it would have been very far considering they won't even defend their work and statements when evidence IS provided (even if that evidence had to be dregged from the WayBack Machine after they deleted it).
I will look over your table more closely later today if I can. A preliminary examination shows that it seems to be limited to rat/mouse carcinogenicity which is suggestive of human effect but generally not considered as much more than suggestive (which is one of the reasons why we have the different "Classes" of carcinogenicity). Even within such closely related species as rats and mice the table shows huge variations with Benzidine seeming to be ten times as carcinogenic in mice as in rats and Benzofuran being almost twenty times as carcinogenic in rats as in mice.
I still feel that the proper burden lies upon you Mark: you clearly "started" the attack upon my work in general, and if you feel you have found a weakness or oversight you should be ready and able to demonstrate the results of that weakness/oversight.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Posted by: Anonymous | July 20, 2007 5:07 PM
Stephen, after five hours, given reasonably standard environmental conditions, even a martini glass with WATER in it should have lost a gram or two... are you sure your cat isn't piddling in it? :>
TL, what I was saying was that "secondhand smoking", given the relative concentrations and normal ventilation conditions might be considered to be about 1,000th as dangerous as smoking. As for Galileo, the shoe is on the other foot: I was saying that taking a court ruling to be meaningful as scientific evidence (as you seemed to be doing) was not valid. I'm not familiar however with Swedish law or that particular case in question. I do have some friends over there who might be more familiar with it though and I will suggest to them they stop in here if you like.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Posted by: Michael J. McFadden | July 20, 2007 5:15 PM
McFadden:
Your argument asserts the equivalence of carcinogenicity of alchohol and
second-hand cigarette smoke. That's completely invalid - as I showed in the post. Now you want to argue that my refutation is incorrect - because I didn't use the carcinogens in smoke that you think I should have.
The fact remains that your argument is bogus - and I think you're aware of that, and you're scrambling for excuses. The basic premise of your argument is wrong - but instead of admitting that, you're finding petty things to squabble about.
So:
(1) Your argument is wrong. Period. It's only valid if you assume that there
is no variation in carcinogenicity. That's wrong - as anyone with a shred
of common sense would be able to guess without needing to cite the specific numbers.
(2) The mouse/rat thing is a red-herring, as I'm sure you know. We *can't*
do controlled studies of carcinogenicity in humans. Human behavioral studies are never controlled that precisely (because they can't be) and it would be incredibly unethical to do a controlled study that administers known carcinogens to people in controlled situations to see who gets sick and dies. When it comes to cancer, we have well-understood models of
how mice and rats compare to people. We can't get a precise number from
animal models; but we can get order of magnitude approximations - which
is more than enough for things like the 4 order of magnitude difference between alchohol and benzo(a)pyrine; or the 5 orders of magnitude for one of the others.
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | July 20, 2007 6:47 PM
Oh, and as long as your quibbling over the carcinogenicity figures being for the wrong constituents of tobacco smoke, and the accuracy of animal models - can you show *any* actual data to support that 1,000 times figure to even within an order of magnitude? Or did you just pull it out of thin air?
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | July 20, 2007 6:49 PM
The only reason to mention Galileo here is because you feel persecuted by court (in lieu of the Inquisition). Or, at worst, I am misreading you as you were misreading me.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 20, 2007 7:04 PM
Mark C wrote, "Oh, and as long as your quibbling over the carcinogenicity figures being for the wrong constituents of tobacco smoke, and the accuracy of animal models - can you show *any* actual data to support that 1,000 times figure to even within an order of magnitude? Or did you just pull it out of thin air?"
Sure. Check the 1986 SGR and you'll find the studies cited there indicate exposures of anywhere from 1/100th of a cigarette per day to 2/10ths of one per day. In conditions with proper care taken toward increased ventilation the figures should be even smaller.
The full derivation and justification for the figure takes up about 10 pages in Appendix B of Brains. But if using the SGR makes you happy for now, go ahead.
As to rats/mice/people, why do you think they bother to have such classifications as Class A etc if the cross-species modeling was as certain as you seem to feel? Do you know what the different classes of carcinogenicity are and why they bother separating them?
And if asking you to do the proper work of a refutation is considered "scrambling for excuses"... well... I don't know what I can say about that.
As noted, I expected you might not want to do the research yourself, and I *will* try to get to it later today or over the weekend. It's something I would definitely want to explore more fully before discussing it in the future. You'll note that I make no quibble at all about your essential point of it being a factor that should be, and that I should have, considered. I believed that the relative quantities of dosage (2,000 to 1) would have made up for any such factor, but I recognize that it should be checked in any event.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Posted by: Anonymous | July 20, 2007 7:44 PM
TL wrote, "The only reason to mention Galileo here is because you feel persecuted by court (in lieu of the Inquisition). Or, at worst, I am misreading you as you were misreading me."
I'm sorry Torbjorn. I think our language difference may have played a part in the misunderstanding. You'd written:
"...there have been court cases here where persons have gotten compensation for lung cancers that can be directly traced to their work in former smoking environments. So it seems the casual connection can be fairly ascertained besides epidemic studies."
And I was saying in response that a court ruling does not determine scientific fact. That's why I brought up Galileo: it's the classic example of a political position overruling science.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Posted by: Michael J. McFadden | July 20, 2007 10:01 PM
Mark C, in your lead-off posting you stated, "From another site, I got the names of a few of the carcinogens in cigarette smoke." and the link (which isn't showing up on this pasting to "another site" was:
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/07/
Can you give me a better reference than that? Or shall I simply pick a couple of the Class A Carcinogens I reference in Brains?
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Posted by: Michael J. McFadden | July 20, 2007 10:13 PM
Alchohol analogies aside, I've always considered the claim that "second hand smoke is as dangerous or even more dangerous as is first hand smoke" to be obviously deceptive slant. After all, the second hand smoker is inhaling drastically diffused smoke compared to the first-hander, even when the first hander is using a filter (the 1000x less figure seems flexible, since the precise difference would obviously be altered by specific, significant variances in room ventilation, i.e., windows, air conditioning, etc.)
All the above debate doesn't change this obvious point, so the heart of McFadden's theme (that second hand smoke is radically less dangerous as typically inhaled than is first hand smoke) appears correct, in spite of the nitpicks re the details.
Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | July 21, 2007 1:49 AM
16 hours on, and the evaporation from my gin is still too small to measure reliably with my scale: 1 g +/- 1g.
This implies that McFadden's evaporation figure is too high by a factor of at least 8 and possibly a lot more.
Temperature: 23C, humidity 76%. The surface of the liquid is a circle of 6 cm diameter. And my roof does not leak.
Posted by: Stephen | July 21, 2007 2:56 AM
McFadden:
I understood that, obviously. But the subtext was that it was a ruling that you didn't agree with. And it is also the classic example that crackpots put forward to defend their position.
Now, normally one would choose the lesser of two cigarettes when reading a text. But the context here favored my reading.
Also, I'm curious. What do language difference do you see?
I see that you have severe difficulties to read my comments, but it seems to be more on the logical level. For example, I discuss tobacco smoke particles venting from lungs in the context of measurements for clean room technology, and you jump to the unwarranted conclusion that I discuss particles venting from clean rooms.
That, and the fact that you are nitpicking as in this comment, made me confine my previous answers to a subset of your questions. If you feel that it was a language problem on any of our parts, perhaps I should reconsider that.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 21, 2007 7:48 AM
Apart for the occasional editorial mistake, I mean. :-P
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 21, 2007 7:52 AM
Agreed, and as I believe introduced that slant, it goes to potentiality as you say "typically inhaled". It isn't often that second-hand smokers sits in such a totally smoke-saturated environment where the filter smoker gets cleaner air. But IIRC it can happen.
So we would have to take steps to avoid it - prohibiting smoking in public spaces seems like an obvious act.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 21, 2007 8:04 AM
McFadden:
I'll try to correct the broken link this afternoon.
But the point you keep missing is that *which* specific carcinogenic constituents of cigarette smokes you consider aren't all that relevant. Your argument is bogus because it
doesn't differentiate *at all* between things that vary by multiple orders of magnitude.
In case you hadn't noticed, this blog is about *math*; and my critique was about the ridiculous mathematical error in your argument. Which you simultaneously say that you don't dispute, and then dispute on a variety of quibbling points.
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | July 21, 2007 9:50 AM
"Agreed, and as I believe introduced that slant, it goes to potentiality as you say "typically inhaled". It isn't often that second-hand smokers sits in such a totally smoke-saturated environment where the filter smoker gets cleaner air. But IIRC it can happen.
So we would have to take steps to avoid it - prohibiting smoking in public spaces seems like an obvious act."
Interesting jump. Which brings us back to the point. Which is -- that such zero tolerance measures are unnecessary, and not in line with the treatment of other things in society that people enjoy and/or find necessary or convenient which may even be potential hazards. However you all work out the math, I am assuming from Marc C.'s figures that there is SOME level of carcinogenic alcohol in my local bar. (Or I can say, as some smoking ban proponents, "If I can smell it, it must be there") Am I concerned?, not one bit. I believe Mr. McFadden's original point was a social choice between zero tolerance and other sorts of accomodation.
Posted by: GDF | July 21, 2007 11:52 AM
I agree - a total ban is of course the natural act for a killer drug.
It is unfortunately impossible when a drug is established not only on a market but in a culture. Baby steps.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 21, 2007 12:35 PM
OK, my gin has now been standing for 26 hours, and we finally have some sort of result: an evaporation of 2.5g +/- 1g. Even if you generously assume that this is entirely alcohol, Dunc's skepticism was well justified. The statement "A standard martini releases roughly one full gram of the Class A carcinogen ethyl alcohol into the air in the space of an hour" is, as Jamie and Adam like to say, busted.
Posted by: Stephen | July 21, 2007 1:18 PM
"It isn't often that second-hand smokers sits in such a totally smoke-saturated environment where the filter smoker gets cleaner air. But IIRC it can happen."
Seems to me that with a rough, intuitive estimate, this would only occur in an airtight box just big enough to accomodate both the smoker and the second-hand smoker.
For the record, I'm all for banning smoking in certain public places (restaurants, and expecially planes), but not in a bar or a pool room (for instance). Obviously there's a grey area here wherein reasonable folks can disagree.
Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | July 21, 2007 1:56 PM
So you've already gone up from one 1000th (0.1%) to 1-20%. And when I looked up the 1986 SGR, the equivalent exposure figure cited was 0.1 to 1 cigarette per day. But what's a few orders of magnitude amoung friends?
And what is this "no safe limit" business you keep harping on? Are you under the misimpression that all substances with no safe limit are equally potent?
Posted by: trrll | July 21, 2007 4:10 PM
A non-smoker working with say forty puffers who smoke intermittently may be absorbing smoke-however diluted much more frequently than any of the smokers.
Posted by: Lung Spitter | July 21, 2007 6:11 PM
There have been a number of challenges/questions posed to me. I'll try to hit them all:
Stephen, I am surprised at your results. The 76% humidity may have something to do with it: I doubt the humidity levels in my house in late April or 2005 were anywhere near that. Humidity is fairly high in Philadelphia at the moment but unfortunately so is the temperature. I will redo the experiment using a martini glass with 48g of 100 proof vodka. If anyone else here would also like to share the experiment they would be welcome to.
TL, Let's accept that we just had an innocent misunderstanding about the Galileo reference. :) You say, "It isn't often that second-hand smokers sits in such a totally smoke-saturated environment where the filter smoker gets cleaner air. But IIRC it can happen." Can you provide a few examples? It shouldn't be hard to figure out the concentration of the smoke inhaled by the smoker using the standard 10 puffs at 20 ml per puff for total mainstream inhalation vs whatever the sidestream emissions are in an experimental situation comparable to my "standard small neighborhood bar" under the ETS Exposure button on my www.Antibrains.com website.
I'd recommend using either total "tar" or total "nicotine" for your measurements as picking just about any other component leaves the door WIDE open for distortion through cherry picking.
Now... speaking of cherry picking or distortion, Mark C. wants me to defend against his charge about the relative carcinogenicity of alcohol vapors compared to the Class A carcinogens in tobacco smoke. I believe there are six recognized Class A components of ETS: Arsenic, benzene, naphthylamine, aminobi-phenyl, vinyl chloride and chromium.
According to the 1999 Massachusett's benchmark tests, I believe a standard cigarette emitted on the order of 300 micrograms of benzene and less than 100 nanograms of the other five combined. I'll refrain from cherry picking the lit'luns and head straight for benzene.
As Mark pointed out the figure for alcohol producing cancer in 50% of rats was about 9,110 mg/kg/day. The figure for benzene was 169 mg/kg/day. Benzene then, at least for rats in this table, appears to be 54 times as carcinogenic as alcohol. So (just to keep it simple) let's say the true evaporation figure under standard temp/humidity conditions is actually .911g/hour. Then to be equal in "carcinogenic threat" we would need for a cigarette to emit .0169 grams... i.e. 1/54th the amount of the alcohol emitted from the drink.
Am I correct so far?
OK... as we saw above a cigarette actually emits .0003 grams. So we would need to burn 56 cigarettes to put out the same "total human carcinogenicity" in terms of benzene as our martini does. If we are willing to say that the average smoker will smoke two cigarettes in a bar/restaurant in the course of an hour, then it would take 28 smokers to be as deadly a threat to their companions as a single drinker.
Mark, if you would like to do the figuring for any of the other 5 Class A components of tobacco smoke you are welcome to. Since they are all present only in quantities of NANOgrams I kind of doubt you'll get results that would support your main contention that my comparison is totally without foundation.
HOWEVER... I will freely admit that my figure of 1 martini equaling 2,000 cigarettes should indeed have been corrected for this relativity and that it might be more correct to say that 1 martini = only about 50 cigarettes in terms of the threat to others.
Mark et al, if there are any problems with anything I have figured above, I am quite sure you will let me know...
And of course, a good bit of this argument rests upon my now disputed evaporation experiment. Do we have any profound neutrals here so far who'd like to give it a try? And, of interest, any chemists who'd like to discuss how the proportions of evaporation work for mixtures as opposed to straight grain alcohol? And how humidity would affect alcohol's evaporation speed?
::sigh:: Guess I'm gonna have to waste a good 48g of 100 proof vodka here on my own. Plus I gotta lock up that damn tipsy kitty!
:>
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Posted by: Michael J. McFadden | July 22, 2007 2:33 AM
TL wrote, after quoting me:
"I understood that, obviously. But the subtext was that it was a ruling that you didn't agree with. And it is also the classic example that crackpots put forward to defend their position."
OK! Sorry TL, my fault. I did not pick up on the idea that you were referring to the subtext. The subtext was not consciously intended so I wasn't really looking for it.
- Michael
Posted by: Anonymous | July 22, 2007 2:38 AM
OK, the weather forecast for Philadelphia for the next two days calls for temperatures of 65 to 80 degrees with humidity levels ranging from 35 to 90%. I can't promise not to hit the air conditioner at some point in there, but any reduction in humidity should be compensated to some extent by a reduction in heat.
This time I have set up two martini glasses - very nice cobalt blue ones that I normally keep safe and in a china cabinet so there damn well better not be any earthquakes while they're sitting on top of a turned-off & unplugged TV - with one of them having about 48 g of water and one with about 48 g of 100 proof vodka. We'll see what happens. My hypothesis is that there will be significantly less evaporation of water than vodka and that at the end of 48 hours (3am EDT Tuesday morning) I'll have somewhere around 10 to 15g of water in one and about 0 to 5g of watered vodka in the other. But ... we'll see.
In terms of the SGR exposures: note that the figures you quote were, I believe, concerning shifts of 8 to 10 hours. They also concerned settings with air exchange rates that were probably 1/2 to 1/10th the air exchange rates that would be found in any decently ventilated modern bar or restaurant that was allowing smoking. Try recomputing your findings on the basis of a single hour and with those air exchange corrections and I think you'll find my estimates fall *well* within an order of magnitude.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Posted by: Michael J. McFadden | July 22, 2007 3:03 AM
Norm:
Sure, and at this stage it is a still a mere factoid; and I can't even remember if it was data with or without taking ventilation into account. The point would be that second-hand smokers can possibly get worse exposure than the smoker without some ventilation. With trrl's figures, second-hand smoke is pushed into the verified danger zone of 1 cigarette/day. (There is apparently no safe lower dosage found yet.)
But also by trrl's figure, as far as the main argument here the exact transmission effectivity is now smoke into the ventilation, water under the river, or whatever.
McFadden:
On transmission effectivity, see above. [Note: Your argumentation strategy as it is now lined up, is to nitpick each and every of the weaker (less predictive and/or certain) facts or models, whether they overlap with the stronger or not. The Gish gallop doesn't work well for Gish either outside a presentation environment, you know.]
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 22, 2007 7:27 AM
Fundamentally, this is a "but Johnny's mother down the street lets him stay up late" argument. Most people learn by about age 10 that this is generally fruitless, because there the usual response is "well if he were my son, he'd have to go to bed earlier, too." Regulation of alcohol has at least as much to do with politics and practicality as science, and there may indeed be a scientific case for more stringent regulation of alcohol vapor. I can tell you that if we had levels of alcohol vapor in our lab comparable to a typical bar, we'd be in serious trouble with OSHA. but an that doesn't help you much with secondhand smoke.
However, from a biological point of view it is very bad science to base an argument on extrapolations based on carcinogenic potencies of a particular component of tobacco smoke vs. alcohol, extrapolated down to much lower concentrations than those used to study carcinogenic potency. The dose-response curves may be nonlinear, in which case a linear extrapolation will yield erroneous results. Moreover, tobacco smoke is not a pure chemical, but contains over a hundred toxic or carcinogenic compounds (with levels that are differ in sidestream smoke as compared to mainstream smoke) that may interact in the body to enhance or inhibit one another's effects. So while the sort of extrapolation McFadden is trying to do might be sufficient to obtain a preliminary estimate of risk, it could easily be wrong by orders of magnitude. Lacking epidemiological or experimental data to support it, it will carry very little weight with scientists. And obsessing at length about exactly how to do such an inherently unreliable calculation makes it appear that he does not really understand the science. While it is not exactly a scientific "howler" such as ignoring differences in carcinogenic potency, such fallacious reasoning is definitely the sort of thing that will negatively impact the chance that a paper will be accepted for publication in a good journal.
Posted by: Anonymous | July 22, 2007 1:00 PM
If we agree that second hand smoke as is ever likely to be typically inhaled is far less dangerous than first hand smoke (btw, the first hand smoker is also inhaling his own second hand smoke in impossible-to-universalize levels; no smoker breathes only through his filter while smoking a cigarette), McFadden is correct in complaining about second-hand smoke hysteria, especially when I've often heard (without reasonable qualifiers) that "second hand smoke is as bad or even worse than first hand smoke."
Seems to me that an effective campaign against second hand smoke could be made without the use of such hysteria.
If it were me, Mr. McFadden, I'd drop the alcohol analogy; there's clearly far too many variables of difference to account for in a clearly conclusive manner with such an analogy. Apples and oranges.
Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | July 22, 2007 1:13 PM
"Seems to me that an effective campaign against second hand smoke could be made without the use of such hysteria."
That's exactly the point. I respectfully disagree Norm, else, as I see it, the hysteria would not have been necessary. But the problem is we can't know because hysteria and ideology and political and financial interest are being repackaged now as science. (IMHO) And those who try to oppose this trend/tactic are dismissed as "cranks"
Posted by: GDF | July 22, 2007 1:29 PM
But you're not *advocating* hysteria ... right, GDF? Neither am I.
Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | July 22, 2007 1:54 PM
A smoker clearly inhales SHS while smoking in a bar or other communal smoking venue, but probably not as much as somebody who works there all day. But in any case, the epidemiology argues that the risks of SHS are less than those of active smoking--just greater than is considered acceptable in a workplace.
Posted by: trrll | July 22, 2007 3:23 PM
Amen, Norm. Now maybe you and I can go in a room somewhere and work out this whole issue.
trrll -- now you KNOW that just brings us back to questions about the epidemiology. Orac defends Glantz's "Helena" and criticizes Enstrom. (Which honestly baffles me.) The large WHO study finds something that could even be interpreted as a "protective effect". The Surgeon General says "no safe level"... "The Debate is Over". McFadden's data can't get published... Who funds what?(And we go 'round again...)
Posted by: GDF | July 22, 2007 6:23 PM
Anonymous wrote, " And obsessing at length about exactly how to do such an inherently unreliable calculation makes it appear that he does not really understand the science."
Er, Anonymous, *I* wasn't the one who was "obsessing at length" about it. My initial posting of the idea was meant to be a thought provoking piece in the BMJ. The blogger HERE was the one who began trying to analyze it down into the subcomponents and then challenged me to defend myself.
Anonymous also wrote, " While it is not exactly a scientific "howler" such as ignoring differences in carcinogenic potency, such fallacious reasoning is definitely the sort of thing that will negatively impact the chance that a paper will be accepted for publication in a good journal."
The paper in question has NOTHING to do with this subtopic of alcohol fumes other than that both discussions related to secondary smoke and the concept that worrying about one isn't much more rational than worrying about the other.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Posted by: Michael J. McFadden | July 22, 2007 7:06 PM
But, Mr. McFadden, as trrll expressed, it may indeed be a rational concern for people working in smoking environments for extended periods of time, which is the best argument for banning smoking in some such public places. It's just that, in many folks' reasonable opinions, such banning can be taken too far, which I presume is your point.
Frankly, I'm more concerned about numerous other sources of pollution in our environment than I am about many SHS situations.
Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | July 23, 2007 1:32 AM
Norm:
I don't agree with this being hysteria, since we are discussing epidemiological risks for bystanders. We could also add economical losses and losses in individuals freedom of choice which comes from creating lower quality environments, but that is another debate IMO.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 23, 2007 1:12 PM
McFadden, you're still not getting it. If you want to make an epidemiological claim about the dangers of second-hand ethanol it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to check things like the rate of evaporation of ethanol, and its carcinogenic potency, before making the claim. So far it appears that none of your quantitative claims stand up to even minimal scrutiny. That's unimpressive.
Posted by: Stephen Wells | July 23, 2007 1:59 PM
Mr. Larsson,
Just curious about how you stand on a few things...
Do you believe that no worker should ever be allowed to work around ANY level of SHS (for example, a pool hall employee in a well ventilated hall who signs an informed consent?)
Should the law allow for a bar owner (let's say he's a smoker himself) who runs his own establishment, which is clearly posted on the door "smoking allowed"?
Should well ventilated "smoking rooms" in office buildings be illegal?
Should "cigar bars" be prohibited?
Should smoking be allowed in private clubs where the members prefer to allow smoking and one member is paid to tend bar? What if the club is a "smoking club"?
Posted by: GDF | July 23, 2007 2:04 PM
Now you're back to the "But Timmmmmmmy gets to stay up late" argument. The problem is that this argument only carries weight if you've already established that Timmy shouldn't be going to bed earlier. So for this to be anything more than deceptive rhetoric, you need to present evidence that we shouldn't be worrying about ill effects of alcohol vapor. Which would, of course, require epidemiological data for alcohol of the same kind that you're disputing with respect to SHS. And then you would have to establish that SHS really is no more dangerous than alcohol vapor, and naive linear extrapolations of carcinogenic potency will not do that. So even bringing up such an argument gives the impression that you don't really have much understanding of the biological issues involved.
Posted by: trrll | July 23, 2007 2:35 PM
Perhaps I should have mentioned that all of the above are prohibited where I live. My second example is based on a real situation (although I don't know if he is a smoker himself) -- the guy is a Vietnam Veteran who opened a little "corner" tavern. It made the news because he replaced the American flag he used to fly with a Soviet one (as a symbol of protest).
Posted by: GDF | July 23, 2007 2:39 PM
Stephen, I *did* check out the rate of evaporation, and am doing so again after prompting by a poster above. As a recipient of neither Big Tobacco nor Big Antitobacco money I do not have a diffusion spectrometer or whatever might be required to determine the alcohol/water ratio in the remnants of a mixed drink, so I used a shot of grain alcohol in a martini glass. The experiment is perfectly valid within reasonable limits and easily replicable... far better than offered by the opposition.
Trrl, I myself *think* that only crazy people should be worrying about the effects of alcohol vapor in bars and restaurants, but on the other hand I freely admit to having done no research about it. If you yourself worry about it then I would suggest either staying out of those places or working to have alcohol service and consumption banned