"It's Very Scientific"

NOTE TO READER: I'm glad to feature yet another excellent article by my friend, Chris Snowdon of London, England who wrote the book on the anti-smokers movement. Fear-mongering like Surgeon General Regina Benjamin is engaging in under the illusion of being scientific must be reigned in. Snowdon is the man to do it. --- Becky Johnson, Editor



by Chris Snowdon

December 10, 2010
article published online at: http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2010/12/its-very-scientific.html

London, England -- It was a mark of the crankiness of Victorian-era anti-cigarette campaigners that they claimed cigarettes caused instantaneous death (see Chapter 2, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist). And it was partly because the public became weary of such obvious scare stories that they found it difficult to believe the real truth—several decades later—that chronic smoking could cause fatal diseases in middle- and old-age.

But everything comes full circle and the latest comments from the new Surgeon General, Regina Benjamin, seem designed to take us back at least 100 years. Her predecessor was a tough act to follow. Scientifically illiterate statements like "There is no significant scientific evidence that suggests smokeless tobacco is a safer alternative to cigarettes" and "There is no safe level of secondhand smoke" set new standards of quackery at the Surgeon General's office. But the new incumbent looks up to the job, and when you have an obese Surgeon General serving a president who smokes, all bets are off.

The latest headline claim—breathing a puff of secondhand smoke can kill you instantly—is really just a variation of Carmona's "no safe level" rhetoric. It takes the theoretical possibility that someone at death's door who is critically, terminally ill with heart disease could be finished off by smoking a cigarette, and then extends it to suggest that healthy people are being killed in the street from breathing secondhand smoke.

Benjamin has done nothing to distinguish between these very different situations. Indeed, she has gone out of her way to add to the confusion. This is very clear from her recent interview with Ed Baxter on KGO Radio. Baxter gives her every opportunity to clear up any misunderstanding but Benjamin just keeps piling it up. The transcript is below, and requires little further comment, but I recommend listening to the audio to get a measure of the woman. She doesn't exactly ooze authority. (Listen here - starts at 17.00). My thanks to Becky Johnson for helping with the transcript.

EB: Well, this may be, there have been a lot of warnings about cigarette smoking, but this may be the scariest I've seen. So we really wanted to get it straight from the person who did the study and the survey so we went straight to the top. Surgeon General, Regina Benjamin is on the KGO live line. Thank you for joining us.

RB: Thank you for having me.

EB: If I'm reading this correctly, you're saying your next cigarette could be your last. That's a dramatic way of putting it: "The next cigarette could be your last." This is a report coming straight out of the Surgeon General's office. Cigarette smoking can cause instantaneous shut down of systems, is that true?

RB: It can certainly cause a heart attack and death, that's true. This report is the 30th Surgeon General's report on tobacco. The previous reports have focused on what diseases are caused by tobacco. But this particular report focuses on how tobacco smoke really damages every organ in your body. One of the things we know is that if you inhale cigarette smoke or inhale passive, second-hand smoke you might have an underlying cardiac disease like heart disease and didn't even know it. When you inhale it, those chemicals, they can irritate the blood vessels, irritate that lining, causing immediate damage. And also cause your blood to be thicker and clot quicker so that can cause an immediate heart attack. So just that one cigarette can cause a heart attack.

JLJ: So even just second hand smoke? Just a whiff of the smoke?

RB: That's correct. We know that cigarettes today have over 7,000 chemicals and chemical compounds. And inhaling those chemicals causes immediate damage to your blood vessels.

EB: And this, of course, would be more severe or traumatic to somebody who has a chronic condition, who has been smoking for a while....

RB: No, it's anyone! Most people who have heart disease, for example, don't even know they have heart disease because they never had any symptoms.

EB: So anyone just walking on a street, a first cigarette or just second hand smoke?
This could be caused by hypertension or any underlining disease, correct?

RB: Any underlying disease or people who may appear to be very healthy and just didn't know it! And also people who are healthy, it affects them as well. It affects your blood vessels and can damage your DNA. We find that people who, particularly women who have reproductive problems, because the DNA is affected by the chemicals in the tobacco. We didn't even know these chemicals existed. We didn't even know that there were 7,000 different chemicals and chemical compounds so these things are new. It's very scientific, but how these chemicals affect your body. Every organ in your body.

EB: We know it causes cancer. It may lead to heart disease. People are talking about chronic diseases. We're talking about instantaneous—and I just want to make sure we're understanding this correctly—instantaneous... your next cigarette or breathing someone's secondhand smoke could cause, basically, an acute episode that could lead to instant death.

RB: That's correct. The other thing is that these cigarettes today are more addicting. The nicotine, the chemical compounds that we now have the science behind—and this report tries to explain how it becomes much more addicting.

BS Alert:--The 'third-hand smoke' hoax

NOTE TO READER: This study has been spread around the world by such notables as Brian Williams of NBC, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, and of course, the anti-tobacco forces which are out to treat those who smoke as pariah's, this time with a study by Dr. Hugo Destaillats who was awarded $704,901.00 by TRDRP and the taxpaying smokers of California to prepare this travesty of science.

---Becky Johnson, editor

BS Alert: The ‘third-hand smoke' hoax

February 10, 8:23 PM
from: Louisville Public Policy Examiner
by Thomas McAdam

found online at: http://www.examiner.com/x-31244-Louisville-Public-Policy-Examiner~y2010m2d10-BS-Alert--The-thirdhand-smoke-hoax

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Louisville Public Policy Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

(Graphic: McAdam/saysit.com)

What’s that you say? You’ve never even heard of the horrors of “third-hand smoke?” Well, we here at the Louisville Public Policy Examiner like to keep our readers on the cutting edge of pseudoscience, so that they may demonstrate their newly-acquired erudition at Sierra Club meetings and Metro Health Department seminars. Worse than DDT, Radon, and Trans-Fats combined, third-hand smoke—or, THS—may well prove to be the greatest scientific scare of the century. Not since the Great Cranberry Scare of 1959 has junk science been ratcheted up to such a hysterical level.

It all started in January of 2009, with a silly little article in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. A consumer telephone poll about beliefs surrounding the health risks of smoking, that had been conducted in 2005, had asked 1,500 people if they agreed with the statements:

• “Breathing air in a car today where people smoked yesterday can harm the health of babies and children.”
• “Breathing air in a room where people smoked yesterday can harm the health of babies and children.”

(McAdam/ImageChef)

Those surveyed who stated they agreed or agreed strongly were categorized as believing third-hand smoke harmed the health of babies and children. Predictably, respondents who self-identified themselves as smokers, tended to minimize any perceived harm; while non-smokers were more likely to assume some harm from THS. Only 65 percent of nonsmokers and 43 percent of smokers agreed with the statements, which researchers interpreted as acknowledgement of the risks of third-hand smoke.

The survey results were cited in the article as “evidence” that third-hand smoke had been “identified as a health danger.” This article in Pediatrics was not a clinical study, so it provided no original research that THS is an actual medical or scientific observable or definable entity, or that it has ever been shown to harm babies or children… or how such a thing might scientifically even be plausible.

Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff (pronounced “when-I-cough;” that’s really his name), the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, said in the Pediatrics article:

Everyone knows that second-hand smoke is bad, but they don’t know about this. We needed a term to describe these tobacco toxins that aren’t visible. Third-hand smoke is what one smells when a smoker gets in an elevator after going outside for a cigarette, or in a hotel room where people were smoking. Your nose isn’t lying, the stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: ’Get away.’

(Animation: photobucket.com)

So, the clever wordsmith Dr. Winickoff sent press releases around to the usual suspects in the leftist press, and soon got a bite from Roni Rabin at the New York Times, who wrote a perfectly outrageous article titled, A New Cigarette Hazard: ‘Third-Hand Smoke.’

Rabin talks about “…the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing, not to mention cushions and carpeting, that lingers long after second-hand smoke has cleared from a room. The residue includes heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials that young children can get on their hands and ingest, especially if they’re crawling or playing on the floor.” Mercy me! Those poor little tykes crawling about in all those carcinogens and radioactive materials! The horror!

(Graphic: dailysciencedose.com)

Then, Ms. Rabin really jumps the shark: “Among the substances in third-hand smoke are hydrogen cyanide, used in chemical weapons; butane, which is used in lighter fluid; toluene, found in paint thinners; arsenic; lead; carbon monoxide; and even Polonium-210, the highly radioactive carcinogen that was used to murder former Russian spy Alexander V. Litvinenko in 2006. Eleven of the compounds are highly carcinogenic.”

For our Physics-challenged readers, we need to remind you that Polonium is a radioactive element discovered by Marie Curie and Pierre Curie in 1898 that is naturally occurring and widely distributed in small amounts across the earth’s crust. Your average diet naturally includes 1 to 10 picocuries (billionth of a curie) of Polonium-210 a day. Most (50-90%) leaves the body promptly in our stool and the rest decreases in our body with a half-time of 50 days. A smoker who smokes a pack of 20 cigarettes a day takes in about 0.72 picocuries of Polonium-210.

To put these numbers into perspective, that Russian spy, Litvinenko, is believed to have been exposed to 5,000,000,000 picocuries (5 millicuries). As is the fundamental principle of toxicology, the dose makes the poison. Ms. Rabin chose to make a lurid reference to Polonium-210 in a yellow-journalistic attempt to scare the hell out of her readers and start the junk-science ball rolling.

(Graphic: McAdam/saysit.com)

And roll it did. Within months, the neologism “third-hand smoke” was getting more than 3 million references in a Google search. (Interestingly, the term “fourth-hand smoke”—the theory that you can get cancer from simply watching a movie in which Humphrey Bogart is smoking—is now getting 56,600 Google references. Stay tuned.)

By the way, if you’re still worried that Junior’s crawling about in all that THS left in the living room from Uncle Albert’s pipe smoking will render him unto the same fate as the late Russian spy, you need to check out Michael J. McFadden’s computations in Reason Magazine:

It would take one quadrillion days (2.74 trillion years) for that child to absorb 5 millicuries. Unfortunately the universe is only 10 billion years old, so the child would have to lick floors for 274 cycles of our expanding universe to match our radioactive Russian. Of course since he'd normally excrete most of that polonium we'd have to refuse to change his diaper until the end of that period... not a very pleasant thought. And then there's that whole annoying fact that polonium's half-life is only 138 days, so we'd just have to ignore the laws of physics as well in order to justify the story's thesis…

Dr. Hugo Destaillats (Photo: Arizona State Univ.)

Money-hungry “scientists” across the land were quick to spot THS as a possible research goldmine. Dr. Hugo Destaillats, a chemist with the Indoor Environment Department of Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division, recently came out with a marvelous little “study,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), in which he reports:

The burning of tobacco releases nicotine in the form of a vapor that adsorbs strongly onto indoor surfaces, such as walls, floors, carpeting, drapes and furniture. Nicotine can persist on those materials for days, weeks and even months. Our study shows that when this residual nicotine reacts with nitrous acid it forms carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines or TSNAs.

Now, Dr. Hugo is not a medical doctor; he’s an Assistant Research Professor at Arizona State University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His CV lists a Ph.D. in Chemistry (1998), from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina. His “study” did not involve any clinical trials with actual human beings (or even actual mice or rats). He and his student assistants simply applied tobacco smoke to sheets of cellulose as a model indoor material, and determined that TSNAs detected on cellulose surfaces were 10 times higher than those originally present in the sample. That is, after spraying the cellulose sheets with nitrous acid.

In the PNAS paper, Dr. Hugo suggests various ways to limit the impact of the third hand smoke health hazard, including, replacing nicotine-laden furnishings, carpets and wallboard. Presumably, this simple—albeit pricey—technique will also eradicate all residue and vestiges of Radon and Trans-Fats also. Unanswered, of course, is the question of whether you could have equal success in reducing TSNAs on your rugs and furniture by just refraining from spraying everything with nitrous acid in the first place.

(Illustration: Dr. Hugo Destaillats)

Before you jump to the conclusion that Dr. Hugo is some sort of moron, you need to know about California’s Proposition 99. In November 1988, California voters approved Prop. 99, “The Tobacco Tax and Health Protection Act”, which instituted a 25¢-per-pack cigarette surtax. Part of this tax revenue is deposited into a Research Account, to be appropriated for research on tobacco-related disease, by the TRDRP. For the bizarre little study we have outlined above, Dr. Hugo Destaillats was awarded $704,901.00 by TRDRP and the taxpaying smokers of California. Maybe Dr. Hugo’s not such a moron after all.

By the way, if you thought we just made up that reference to Humphrey Bogart a few paragraphs back, you need to check out Dr. Hugo’s research monograph: Indoor fate and transport of secondhand tobacco smoke. The Bogart photo you see above was lifted from that article.

God help us if the Louisville Metro Council finds out about THS. The city will never find enough landfill space for all those miles of carpet, wallboard, and tons of furnishings to be discarded when the Council bans THS. And Uncle Albert’s cardigan smoking sweater will have to be buried somewhere in the Yucca Mountains; encased in concrete. To protect future generations, you see.

Watch the video: Uncle Albert smoking…

EVRYTHING YOU EAT CAUSES CANCER:

List of Naturally Occurring Mutagens and Carcinogens Found in Foods and Beverages
(From Environment & Climate News, November 2002, the American Council on Science and Health)

Acetaldehyde (apples, bread, coffee, tomatoes)—mutagen and potent rodent carcinogen
Acrylamide (bread, rolls)—rodent and human neurotoxin; rodent carcinogen
Aflatoxin (nuts)—mutagen and potent rodent carcinogen; also a human carcinogen
Allyl isothiocyanate (arugula, broccoli, mustard)—mutagen and rodent carcinogen
Aniline (carrots)—rodent carcinogen
Benzaldehyde (apples, coffee, tomatoes)—rodent carcinogen
Benzene (butter, coffee, roast beef)—rodent carcinogen
Benzo(a)pyrene (bread, coffee, pumpkin pie, rolls, tea)—mutagen and rodent carcinogen
Benzofuran (coffee)—rodent carcinogen
Benzyl acetate (jasmine tea)—rodent carcinogen
Caffeic acid (apples, carrots, celery, cherry tomatoes, coffee, grapes, lettuce, mangos, pears, potatoes)—rodent carcinogen
Catechol (coffee)—rodent carcinogen
Coumarin (cinnamon in pies)—rodent carcinogen
1,2,5,6-dibenz(a)anthracene (coffee)—rodent carcinogen
Estragole (apples, basil)—rodent carcinogen
Ethyl alcohol (bread, red wine, rolls)—rodent and human carcinogen
Ethyl acrylate (pineapple)—rodent carcinogen
Ethyl benzene (coffee)—rodent carcinogen
Ethyl carbamate (bread, rolls, red wine)—mutagen and rodent carcinogen
Furan and furan derivatives (bread, onions, celery, mushrooms, sweet potatoes, rolls, cranberry sauce, coffee)—many are mutagens
Furfural (bread, coffee, nuts, rolls, sweet potatoes)—furan derivative and rodent carcinogen
Heterocyclic amines (roast beef, turkey)—mutagens and rodent carcinogens
Hydrazines (mushrooms)—mutagens and rodent carcinogens
Hydrogen peroxide (coffee, tomatoes)—mutagen and rodent carcinogen
Hydroquinone (coffee)—rodent carcinogen
d-limonene (black pepper, mangos)—rodent carcinogen
4-methylcatechol (coffee)—rodent carcinogen
Methyl eugenol (basil, cinnamon and nutmeg in apple and pumpkin pies)—rodent carcinogen
Psoralens (celery, parsley)—mutagens; rodent and human carcinogens
Quercetin glycosides (apples, onions, tea, tomatoes)—mutagens and rodent carcinogens
Safrole (nutmeg in apple and pumpkin pies, black pepper)—rodent carcinogen

Note: We would be remiss if we didn’t give some credit to brother Merlyn Seeley, our Louisville Natural Health Examiner: Study shows third hand smoke just as bad for you

Watch the video: Third Hand Smoke Hysteria on NBC Today Show

---

The Thirdhand Smoke Scam

NOTE TO READER: You really have to read these studies. The proof is in the pudding. A lot of what they claim in the title is not there in the studies. This is one of the less convincing studies in that the data appear to have been collected properly, but the conclusions are off the chart. Chris Snowdon explains why. ---Becky Johnson, editor

The thirdhand smoke scam

by Christopher Snowden
Feb 11 2010

found online at: http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2010/02/thirdhand-smoke-scam.html

Now that the thirdhand smoke story has been reported around the globe, it's time to look at the study which led to headlines such as:

Third-hand smoke causes cancer, study shows risks to babies and toddlers

This is not your average piece of epidemiological number-crunching. It involved some real lab work which, when written down, is largely unintelligible to the layman*. Journalists rarely bother to read scientific studies at the best of times, but what chance do they have with paragraphs like this?

Laboratory experiments using cellulose as a model indoor material yielded a > 10-fold increase of surface-bound TSNAs when sorbed secondhand smoke was exposed to 60 ppbv HONO for 3 hours. In both cases we identified 1-(N-methyl-N-nitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridinyl)-4-butanal, a TSNA absent in freshly emitted tobacco smoke, as the major product. The potent carcinogens 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridinyl)-1-butanone and N-nitroso nornicotine were also detected. Time-course measurements revealed fast TSNA formation, with up to 0.4% conversion of nicotine.

And that's from the abstract - the bit that summarises the study for the casual reader. So what does it actually say?

To put it in something close to simple terms, the experiment involved putting nitrous acid (HONO) in contact with nicotine. The nicotine had been absorbed into surfaces (hence 'thirdhand smoke'). In the real-life experiment, this surface was the glove compartment of a truck driven by a heavy smoker (presumably the cabin of a truck was chosen because it is the smallest space a smoker might work in). In the other experiments, they used cellulose substrates.

The aim was to see if the reaction created tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs), specifically NNK, NNA and NNN, some of which are believed to be carcinogenic.

The scientists found no trace of NNN in any experiment. In the glove compartment, they found levels of NNK that were barely above the detectable level (less than 1 ngcm-2). Even in extreme experimental situations, in which cellulose substrates were exposed to pure nicotine vapour, NNK levels failed to reach 5 ngcm-2.

They found somewhat larger measurements of NNA (20 ngcm-2 in extreme experimental conditions) but levels were much lower in the real-life conditions of the truck (1 ngcm-2). This was all rather academic anyway because, as the authors admit:

"NNA carcinogenicity has not been reported."

In other words, the one TSNA they did manage to find in any quantity doesn't cause cancer.

There is nothing obviously wrong with the way the chemistry was done here. The paper simply shows that nitrous acid (HONO) molecules will react with absorbed nicotine (just as it would with free-floating nicotine) to produce TSNAs. The more HONO in the room, and the more nicotine on the surface, the more the reaction will occur (of course).

The problem (and it's a big problem) is that mixing nitrous acid with nicotine is an experiment with virtually no practical application. If your house or car is full of nitrous acid then you have more to worry about than it reacting with absorbed nicotine. As the authors point out near the top of the 2nd column, 1st page:

"The main indoor sources of HONO are direct emissions from unvented combustion appliances, smoking, and surface conversion of NO2 and NO."

NO2 and NO themselves are products of unregulated combustion. So you'll only be exposed to high concentrations of HONO if you're exposed to the products of combustion - ie. you're a peasant in a smoke-filled hut, you live in a very polluted city like New Delhi, or you are in fact smoking a cigarette. The combustion products themselves are carcinogens, and are present in much higher concentrations than the TSNAs. Any surface reaction is negligible. Your problem is the nitrous acid, not the TSNAs.

Is this kind of surface reaction likely to take place in the home? Not at all. Nitrous acid concentrations in the average Californian home are 4.6 parts per billion (ppb). This is 14 times lower than the 65 ppb concentrations used in this experiment (which indirectly compares with EPA limits for NO2 of 53 ppb). The chances of HONO and nicotine reacting to create detectable, let alone harmful, concentrations of TSNAs outside of a laboratory experiment are zilch.

In summary:

• The researchers used concentrations of nitrous acid 14 times higher than would be found in a normal environment

• Even at the unrealistic levels found in the experiment, there is no evidence that such doses are harmful to humans

• The main TSNA produced is not a carcinogen

• The weakest results were found in the real-life conditions, with measurements barely exceeding detectable levels in the smallest conceivable workplace of a heavy smoker

• Any effect from the TSNAs is negligible compared to the effects of the nitrous acid itself
  

* And I thank my bio-chemist friend JPM for his assistance in making it intelligible to me.

When the Lie's so big...

Graph: Total number of hospital admissions in Scotland for heart attack admissions before and after smoking bans were passed in those localities.

NOTE TO READER: Christopher Snowden has been battling for personal freedoms for a long time. Here Snowden addresses a recent report which supposedly shows a dramatic drop in heart attacks since smoking bans have been implemented in Scotland and England. This underscores the hazard of taking our health information from mainstream news. This claim cannot be substantiated with examining hospital admissions during the time period following enactment of the ban. Even worse, the "study" the reporters are quoting from doesn't appear to exist. So the report is false, AND the study non-existent---but it's international news!! ---Becky Johnson, editor

When the Lie's so big...

Oct 16, 2009

by Christopher Snowden
author of: "Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking" (published 2009)


found online at:

http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2009/10/when-lies-so-big.html

I think I'm starting to know how Bill Murray felt in Groundhog Day...

Bans on smoking in restaurants and bars reduces [sic] the risk of heart attacks among non smokers, according to [sic] hard hitting report.

The research, by the U.S. Institute of Medicine reviewed 11 key studies of smoking bans in Scotland, Italy, the U.S and Canada.

They [sic] found drops in the number of heart attacks across the board, ranging from six per cent to an impressive 47 per cent.

Since the idea of smoking bans dramatically reducing the heart attack rate is yet again being circulated by lazy (and illiterate) journalists, I don't feel so bad about publishing yet again the facts which show this to be complete and utter rhubarb. Not only has it not happened, but it could never happen. The smoking bans of England, Scotland and Wales had no effect whatsoever on Britain's heart attack rate.

And no, before you ask, the figures shown below have not been peer-reviewed. There is no need to peer-review complete hospital admissions statistics. They represent the complete data set. They are painstakingly reviewed by professional statisticians before they are published. These statisticians have no agenda and no a priori hypothesis to support. These are the facts.

Epidemiological studies require peer-review because they use a sample of the population to make claims about the entire population. They could, and do, get it wrong. The hospital data of England, Scotland and Wales are the whole data. Complaining that it is not peer-reviewed is like MORI complaining about an election result because they failed to predict the result.

And, unlike Jill Pell, Stan Glantz and all the other authors of the heart attack miracles, I can show you the raw data behind the facts. They are here, here and here.

The myth of the smoking ban ‘miracle’

‘Heart attacks plummet after smoking ban’ declared The Sunday Times earlier this month, as it reported that England’s smoking ban has ‘caused a fall in heart attack rates of about 10 per cent’ (1). A few days later, The Scotsman upped the ante, informing its readers that ‘Smoking ban slashes heart attacks by up to a third across world’ (2).

Tales of heart attacks being ‘slashed’ by smoking bans have appeared with such regularity in recent years that it is easy to forget that there is a conspicuous lack of reliable evidence to support them. It is almost as if the sheer number of column inches is a substitute for proof.

The most recent reports are a case in point. Although The Sunday Times claimed a 10 per cent drop in heart attacks, nowhere in the 500 word article was a source mentioned and no one was quoted giving this figure. The ‘study’ the newspaper referred to does not exist, and the anti-smoking pressure group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) – not renowned for downplaying the risks of passive smoking – went to the unusual lengths of posting a notice on its website the following day to point out that ‘the figures reported in The Sunday Times yesterday (and now circulating elsewhere) are not based on any research conducted to date’ (3).

Although the story quickly went around the globe, no one seems to know where the figure came from. It’s all rather strange. Basing journalism on anonymous sources is commonplace in the world of politics, but it is surely not necessary in the realms of science.

The second story – reported by a host of news organisations, including the BBC – also had no new data to report. Instead, it took its cue from an article in the journal Circulation which examined previous smoking ban/heart attack studies. If nothing else, the Circulation paper offers an opportunity to reflect on just how feeble the collected evidence is on this issue (4).

The first study to make the claim that smoking bans ‘slash’ heart attacks was met with howls of derision when it was published in the British Medical Journal in 2004 (5). Studying the modest population of Helena, Montana – where the number of monthly heart attacks seldom strayed into double digits – the study’s authors made the astounding claim that the town’s smoking ban had led to the rate of acute myocardial infarction (heart attacks) plummeting by 40 per cent.

Dubbed the ‘Helena miracle’ by a legion of sceptics, the 40 per cent finding was damned by its very enormity. Since the authors were adamant that the drop was due to secondhand smoke (rather than smokers quitting), the finding required the reader to believe that 40 per cent of heart attacks in pre-ban Helena had been solely caused by passive smoking in bars and restaurants. To understand quite how miraculous the Helena miracle was, one must bear in mind that around 10 to 15 per cent of coronary heart disease cases are attributed to active smoking. That passive smoking could be responsible for a further 40 per cent strains all credibility.

Despite the inherent implausibility of the hypothesis, further studies were swiftly commissioned. If smoking bans could be shown to immediately save lives, it would be a compelling reason to implement bans elsewhere and expand those already in place. And since all that was required to ‘prove’ the hypothesis was a rough correlation between a declining heart attack rate and the start of a smoking ban, the prospects were good. Heart attack rates had been falling for years in most countries and there were plenty of smoking bans to choose from. The law of averages dictated that another heart miracle would soon come to light.

Flawed though it may have been, the Helena research was followed by several studies that displayed such a cavalier approach to the scientific process that they bordered on the comical. Researchers in Bowling Green, Ohio, for example, saw a large rise in heart attacks during the first year of the smoking ban. Side-stepping this awkward fact, they simply redefined year two of the ban as the ‘real’ post-ban period and, since that year followed an abnormal peak, there was naturally a decline in the heart attack rate. As a consequence, the researchers could triumphantly declare that the smoking ban had led to a 47 per cent reduction in heart attacks (6).

In the Piedmont region of Italy, there was an inconvenient rise in heart attacks amongst those over the age of 60 after the ban, and so those people were simply ignored. In a study that was trailed by the BBC (‘Smoking ban reduces heart risk’), the researchers focused entirely on those under 60, thereby recording an 11 per cent drop in cases (7).

Studies such as these form the basis for the recent reports of smoking bans slashing heart attacks by ‘up to a third’. The Circulation paper gathers them together and concludes that, on average, smoking bans cause rates of acute myocardial infarction to fall by 17 per cent. It includes the studies from Ohio and Italy, as well as three studies that have never been published and have only been ‘reported at meetings’.

The paper does not, however, include a mammoth (published) study of the entire United States, which concluded: ‘In contrast with smaller regional studies, we find that workplace bans are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines in mortality or hospital admissions for myocardial infarction or other diseases.’ (8)

Nor does it include an (unpublished) paper which found no statistically significant fall in heart attacks amongst the entire populations of California, Florida, New York and Oregon (9).

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the ongoing heart-miracle farrago is the eagerness to focus on small studies when complete hospital data is so freely available. It is extraordinary that no BBC journalist, for example, has thought of taking a few minutes to see how many people were rushed to hospital with acute myocardial infarction before and after the smoking bans of England, Scotland and Wales. If they did so, they would see that smokefree legislation has had no tangible influence on heart attack rates at all.

The graphs below show the number of emergency admissions for acute myocardial infarction, with the arrow indicating the start of the smoking ban. What is abundantly clear in each case is that the number of heart attack admissions has been falling for some time. Far from causing further dramatic cuts in heart attack rates, the bans had no discernible effect.

(see chart showing ALL heart attack admissions in the entire country of Scotland before and after smoking bans were instituted in bars and restaurants at top of page.)

The press said: ‘Heart attacks drop by 17 per cent after smoking ban’ ( Telegraph)



The press said: ‘The number of patients suffering a heart attack in Wales has fallen dramatically following the ban on smoking. (Wales Online)
















England

The press said: ‘Heart attacks plummet after smoking ban’ (The Sunday Times).



Publicly accessible hospital admissions data is like kryptonite to those who are so eager to believe in miracles. In most epidemiological studies pertaining to secondhand smoke, the raw data is not published. Here, it is open to all and shows quite clearly that the long-term downward trend in heart attacks has not been affected in any way by the implementation of smoking bans. It provides such a simple and straightforward rebuttal to the heart attack ‘slashing’ hypothesis that one wonders what level of hubris drives those who still espouse it.

The three graphs cover a population larger than the sample groups in all the studies reviewed in Circulation combined, but no matter how much empirical evidence exposes the fantasy of the Helena miracle, it may be too late for the anti-smoking lobby to back down on this issue. Too many reputations are at stake.

After five years of covering these stories so uncritically, the same may be true of the media. One can scarcely blame newspapers for covering stories that offer such dramatic conclusions as the heart miracles. The irony is that if they dug just a little deeper, they might find a more interesting, and more believable, tale of human folly.

SOURCES:

(1) Heart attacks plummet after smoking ban, The Sunday Times, 13 September 2009

(2) Smoking ban slashes heart attacks by up to a third across world, Scotsman, 22 September 2009

(3) ASH Daily News for 15 September 2009, Action on Smoking and Health, 15 September 2009

(4) Declines in Acute Myocardial Infarction After Smoke-Free Laws and Individual Risk Attributable to Secondhand Smoke, Circulation, 21 September 2009

(5) Reduced incidence of admissions for myocardial infarction associated with public smoking ban: before and after study, British Medical Journal, 2004;328:977-980

(6) The impact of a smoking ban on hospital admissions for coronary heart disease, Preventative Medicine, 2007 Jul;45(1):3-8. Epub 2007 Apr 4

(7) Short-term effects of Italian smoking regulation on rates of hospital admission for acute myocardial infarction, 29 August 2006

(8) Changes in U.S. Hospitalization and Mortality Rates Following Smoking Bans, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2009

(9) Do Smoking Bans cause a 27 to 40% drop in admissions for myocardial infarction in hospitals?, The Smoker’s Club

(10) Coronary heart disease: hospital activity, ISD Scotland

(11) Hospital admissions date online, Health Solutions Wales

(12) Hospital Episode Statistics, HES Online

Originally published by Spiked (24/9/09)

And all they wanted was non-smoking sections on aeroplanes...

Outdoor Smoking Task Force Mtg. notes June 16, 2009

Photo: Santa Claus Smoking on a Marlboro Cigarette Pack

NOTE TO READER: At HUFF's request, Council member, Don Lane sent these notes from the task force that came up with the "Smoking Air Pollution Ordinance" which will be passed into law on a second reading tomorrow (Sept 22, 2009) by the Santa Cruz City Council. First Don had claimed the Task Force report was online. It wasn't. Then when he sent it, it was unintelligible. Presumably no one from the public has had a chance to read it yet, but it will be passed into law tomorrow on the afternoon agenda. Note that the Task Force met in private, with only selected members invited. And though the entire ordinance is tailored to remove poor and homeless people from public spaces, there was no representative for homeless people or advocate for smokers invited. This is Ryan Coonerty's world. Zero public input. Secret meetings. Excluded participants. Sweeping loss of rights. HUFF has gone on record as opposing the law due to its intended selective enforcement against marijuana smokers and poor and homeless people.

--- Becky Johnson, Editor

Outdoor Smoking Task Force

Information Gathering Meeting

June 16, 2009 – 3 p.m.

I. Input from City Staff

Dannettee Shoemaker

§ The City has a smoking ban on Main Beach, Cowell’s Beach, parts of San Lorenzo Parks and Grant Street Park. Staff would support a larger ban.

§ The purpose of the ban is for health and the waste issue from cigarette butts

§ The ban has been fairly successful but enforcement is an issue. At the time the ban was passed, there was only one ranger. Now we have four but the smoking ban enforcement of the ban may not always be the highest priority.

§ The debris from smoking on Pacific Avenue, the wharf and other parks is a huge problem.

§ Some City employees and wharf businesses are concerned about how the smoking ban will work and where they and customers will be able to smoke

§ There are real public safety concerns with smoking on the wharf: a ½ mile long wooden structure with pilings coated with creosote

§ There are concerns and fears about losing customers to other jurisdictions where smoking is allowed

§ Would support smoking ban in parks as smoke travels and secondhand smoke is a problem

§ Further, the goal of the Parks and Recreation Department is to encourage people to get out and exercise and smoking doesn’t fit in with this goal.

§ In response to a question from Ryan Coonerty (RC), Its Beach is now within the State’s jurisdiction and just a small sliver belongs to the City.

§ In response to a question from RC, yes a ban in the City’s open space would be supported. There are severe fire concerns, particularly from the nearby residents. Our open space can be just like dry tinder with great fire potential.

Mark Dettle

§ The Public Works Department sees the post-smoking impact as non-point source pollution. Smoking debris blows all over the City and is picked up in storm drains and with street sweepers. Although cigarette butts are individually small, collectively, they become a big problem.

§ Public Works would support a ban from the litter reduction perspective.

Tom Graves

§ City employees affected when cigarette smoke comes in through windows. This can be very impactful to those with asthma.

§ Encourages the Task Force to consider how smoking affects employees in the workplace.

II. Presentations from Invited Guests

Santa Cruz County Department of Health – Laurie Lang and Andrea Silva

[Note: I have a copy of the powerpoint presentation.]

§ Secondhand smoke outdoors is as harmful as secondhand smoke indoors.

§ In a recent clean-up, 26 lbs of butts were recovered from Pacific Avenue in only 9 hours.

§ 85% of Santa Cruz residents are non-smokers

§ Discussion and support of a tobacco retail license

§ Discussion of smoking bans in other cities. Generally, outdoor smoking ordinances create designated smoking areas

§ There is a correlation between smoking rates and the price of cigarettes

à RC commented that San Francisco is considering a 33 cent/pack fee to cover clean-up costs.

§ There are hidden costs to smoking. Three years after Pueblo, CO instituted its smoking ban, a 40% drop in emergency room visits for heart problems was recorded

§ Studies have shown that there is no negative impact from a smoking ban on restaurants and other businesses.

Save Our Shores – Laura Kasa, Lizzie

§ There are tremendous marine life impacts: 1 cigarette butt in will kill marine life in 1 Liter of water

§ Cigarette butts are as toxic to fish as pesticides

§ The litter problem causes by cigarette butts is staggering. 62,000 pounds of butts have been recovered from Santa Cruz beaches over the past two years

§ During the beach clean-ups, cigarette butts are by far, the most common trash found

§ There is a recommendation to classify cigarette butts as toxic waste

§ Cigarette butts do not biodegrade; they contain plastic

§ Cigarette filters (butts) captures the toxins before they enter the smoker’s lungs but when discarded release those toxins into the environment

§ Save Our Shores recommendations:

a. Smoking ban

b. Anti-litter laws

c. Financial assessment on cigarettes (waste fee or tax)

d. Public information campaign / place signage with photos of the impacts (diseased fish, etc)

e. Implement a program to exchange used butts

f. Ban sale of filtered cigarettes (knows is severe but this is a serious problem)

§ In response to a question from Don Lane (DL), Save our Shores said they would be willing to design the signage if the City had the resources to create and install

Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce – Bill Tysseling

§ The Chamber has no position yet and looks forward to seeing a proposal before making specific comments.

§ The solicitation for feedback sent to local businesses yielded a mix of responses

§ Dominican Hospital and Santa Cruz Medical Foundation were enthusiastic for health reasons. Dominican will be going smoke-free by January1, 2010.

§ Community ambiance could be improved by pedestrians not walking around in clouds of smoke. Further, the impact on behaviors, particularly constraining the use of downtown as a smoking lounge, would be positive.

§ There are concerns about pushing the problem elsewhere.

§ There are concerns about enforcement.

§ Competitive impacts have been raised and worries about clientele going to places where you can smoke. Example story: four friends go out to lunch. They are more likely to go to a place where the one smoker in the group can smoke.

§ In re: to a retailer fee, concerns about competitive impacts. Other jurisdictions should be brought in if the City is to proceed with this concept.

§ The City needs to designate places to smoke. Question of who will create the smoking ghettos and the need to consider parameters, distance, protection from the weather and ash try amenities.

§ The City should consider how to address second stories – balconies, roof tops, etc.

§ The City should consider balancing not penalizing those who do smoke with social costs (environmental, health) of secondhand smoke.

§ The City should consider how employee will smoke.

§ The Chamber of Commerce is enthusiastic about participating as the outdoor smoking ordinance concept moves forward.

Santa Cruz County Conference & Visitors Council – Maggie Ivy

§ There are some concerns about enforcement and liability. Los Angeles held businesses harmless.

§ Public education is important. Santa Monica invested $150,000 in the first year of its ban to educate. The CVC could help here with the noticing and dissemination.

§ Some cities have tried a trial period for 90 days or so.

§ The City should consider impact on hotels. Most new properties are completely smoke-free but how to regulation the pool and outdoor lounge areas?

§ The majority of visitors to Santa Cruz would likely enjoy a smoke-free environment but those that do smoke will be inconvenienced.

§ International visitors, about 8% of Santa Cruz County’s tourists, tend to be smokers.

§ Recommends looking at other cities with bans: Los Angeles, Mammoth Lakes, Santa Monica

§ Health and litter issues affect tourism as well.

§ The CVC is happy to participate moving forward.

Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk – Kris Reyes

§ The Boardwalk discontinued smoking about 4-5 years ago. Smoking is allowed in designated areas on the street and these areas receive the necessary attention to keep them clean. The ban has been a success.

§ The reactions of patrons, when asked to smoke in a designated area, have been cordial. Further, more people are proactively asking where they can smoke. This suggests a greater awareness that smoking is not allowed everywhere.

§ The Boardwalk has new beach grooming equipment – sand sifters – that capture litter, including cigarette butts. The equipment has been picking up fewer butts since the City’s beach smoking ban was instituted.

§ A problem area is the Promenade between the casino and Idea restaurant. There is nothing there to prevent people from smoking and other behaviors.

§ The Boardwalk is happy to participate in the process moving forward.

III. Public Comment

John Huffman – Santa Cruz resident and downtown property owner

§ There is a cigarette butt problem around his properties. He cleans plaza lane and finds lots of butts there an in the planter boxes.

§ The sidewalks on Pacific Avenue have cracks that are just the right size for a cigarette butt, requiring some effort to remove.

Ron Perigo – Santa Cruz resident

§ He has noticed a lack of cigarette butt collection points. Because there are not enough places to deposit the butts, people throw them on the ground.

§ Stormdrains have become a collection point for butts.

§ The City of Los Angeles vacuums their stormwater drains every fall before the rains (the task force here informed Mr. Perigo that Santa Cruz does this as well)

Submitted for the record by:

Don Lane

Santa Cruz City Council

809 Center St. Room 10

Santa Cruz, CA 95060

831-420-5022