Nicotine / smoking mega-thread *mega merged*

[Busty St Clare]

Oh shit, I didn't realise I was in the American Healthy living thread.

It seems that smokers are universally dense no matter what their post code. You obviously don't realise the whole reason governments have introduced anti smoking laws is because smokers are a drain on tax payers. The tobacco excises collected do not even come close to covering all the health related costs that smoking relating illnesses cause.

Besides this isn't about how you choose to kill yourself. I couldn't give two shits if you were sitting next to me slamming heroin, at least that is a victimless pursuit. When you decide to smoke next to me though you are inflicting your habit on me.

 

[HCandKROD]

^ Then PLEASE don't sit next to me so I don't inflict my habit on you.Please don't call me names. I am not dense nor naive. Where do you live? It isn't France.

 

[CHiLD-0F-THE-BEAT]

Let's address this burden of proof for passive smoking:

Tobacco smoke contains an estimated 4000 chemical substances including over 60 known or suspected carcinogens (cancer-causing substances) as well as many other toxic substances.

The evidence that passive smoking is a preventable cause of illness and death is overwhelming. Every major health and medical research body that has reviewed the evidence has come to this same conclusion.

This is from Cancer Council Australia.

It goes to to state that:

Children exposed to second-hand smoke are at an increased risk of:
sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
acute respiratory infections
ear problems and
more severe asthma.

Adults are at increased risk of:
lung cancer
coronary heart disease and has
immediate adverse effects on the cardiovascular system.

My Mother and Father smoked when I was younger, and I developed severe asthma very early on in life. My Mother continues to smoke today, although my Father gave up soon after I was born. They always tried to avoid smoking near me, but it can be almost impossible to avoid children being exposed to some cigarette smoke.

There is emerging evidence that even in crowded outdoor locations second-hand smoke can reach high levels.

Some references include: The health consequences of involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke : a report of the Surgeon General; Cardiovascular Effects of Secondhand Smoke Nearly as Large as Smoking; Cardiovascular Effects of Secondhand Smoke Nearly as Large as Smoking; Proposed Identification of Environmental Tobacco Smoke as a Toxic Air Contaminant; Report on passive smoking and children; Tobacco Smoke and Involuntary Smoking - Summary of Data Reported and Evaluation; Real-Time Measurement of Outdoor Tobacco Smoke Particles; day at the European Respiratory Society Congress: passive smoking influences both outdoor and indoor quality (letter); Not just ‘a few wisps’: real-time measurement of tobacco smoke at entrances to office buildings.

 

[Busty St Clare]

^ Then PLEASE don't sit next to me so I don't inflict my habit on you.Please don't call me names. I am not dense nor naive. Where do you live? It isn't France.

A place where every person realises that "Insurance Companies" are not run as a non profit organisation. Our school children are also taught that insurance premiums go down as risks decrease.....for instance if no one smoked health insurance would become cheaper.

 

[Foreigner]

If this thread demonstrates anything at all it's that everyone experiences smoking differently, and in positive, neutral, and negative ways. Smoking laws don't really impinge on one's ability to smoke, it just tells you where you can smoke. Could be worse, you could be getting tossed in jail for possessing tobacco. Look at the bigger picture. Compare that to when the laws didn't exist: non-smokers don't really have a choice in their exposure.

How hard is it to put yourself in someone else's shoes? A lot of people don't like being around smoke from cannabis either. Smoke negatively affects some people. I don't know why we're even debating that fact. It's not just in our imaginations.

 

[HCandKROD]

A place where every person realises that "Insurance Companies" are not run as a non profit organisation. Our school children are also taught that insurance premiums go down as risks decrease.....for instance if no one smoked health insurance would become cheaper.

You have evaded my questions quite some bit. I have been to Nice twice in my life and the smoking there is tremendous! The national healthcare in France is some of the greatest in the world. Start telling the truth and I'll give some credence to your words other than that your statements are just *&%#@""^ to me.Goodbye bustyboy

 

[CHiLD-0F-THE-BEAT]

Why on Earth are you so hung up on his location? Does that make his opinions any less valid?

Would it be easier for you to accept if he were in China, smoking 10 packs a day?

 

[HCandKROD]

Why on Earth are you so hung up on his location? Does that make his opinions any less valid?

Would it be easier for you to accept if he were in China, smoking 10 packs a day?

Actually, the Chinese smoke as much or more than the French do. No, I'm hung up on his/her location because of the smoking rate. Plus, I don't particularly care for this poster. She says she is a moderator but reverts to name calling when out of anything to say. I know other posters have done the same name calling but, you would expect different from a mod. I was called dense which resent. I am far from dense. Not to mention she/he is not from anywhere near France.

 

[CHiLD-0F-THE-BEAT]

My point still stands. Their location has no bearing on their opinion.

 

[atara]

Let's address this burden of proof for passive smoking:
[some random stock quote]

Refers to indoor exposure.

It goes to to state that:
[effects of secondhand smoke]

Not relevant.

My Mother and Father smoked when I was younger, and I developed severe asthma very early on in life. My Mother continues to smoke today, although my Father gave up soon after I was born. They always tried to avoid smoking near me, but it can be almost impossible to avoid children being exposed to some cigarette smoke.

Sad, but not relevant to the discussion.

Some references include: The health consequences of involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke : a report of the Surgeon General; Cardiovascular Effects of Secondhand Smoke Nearly as Large as Smoking; Cardiovascular Effects of Secondhand Smoke Nearly as Large as Smoking

These discuss conventional passive smoking.

Proposed Identification of Environmental Tobacco Smoke as a Toxic Air Contaminant

This isn't a scientific article. It's a proposed law.

Report on passive smoking and children

Also has nothing to do with smoking in public.

Tobacco Smoke and Involuntary Smoking - Summary of Data Reported and Evaluation;

Again refers to indoor exposure.

Real-Time Measurement of Outdoor Tobacco Smoke Particles

The abstract says:

"The main conclusions from the study are that a person can be exposed to concentrated streams of tobacco smoke particles that are many times more polluted than normal background pollution levels. Being exposed outdoors for an hour to several cigarettes at close range could result in an exposure comparable to being present in a smoky tavern for an hour. "

You provide me one single example of a cigarette being smoked for a full hour and I might just take you seriously. This is of relevance, maybe, to people who work in outdoor dining locations which are full of smokers; not to you. (Also, the next article you linked invalidates this claim...)

day at the European Respiratory Society Congress: passive smoking influences both outdoor and indoor quality (letter)

Again, this basically proves my point. The first page has a wonderful graph. The really tall bar shows the level inside a restaurant -- that is, indoor passive smoking, on which the many, many well-done health studies have been performed on the health risks of passive smoking -- inside a restaurant the PM2.5 is about 160 ug/m^3. That's so high that comparing it with background particulate matter would just be silly. On the other hand, the bar marked "in front of Bella Center with smokers" is just above the 25 ug/m^3 line -- a little bit above background, and again we're talking about standing in close proximity to several people smoking cigarettes. It does reach statistical significance, though!

Not just ‘a few wisps’: real-time measurement of tobacco smoke at entrances to office buildings.

So, again, here's the kicker:

The average level of PM2.5 with ≥5 lit cigarettes was 2.5 times greater than the average background level.

Except... this is basically the same number I posted before. Going with 8.4 ug/m^3 as the "average background level", 2.5 * 8.4 = 21.0 ug/m^3, or an increase of 12.6 ug/m^3. If you're looking to invalidate my numbers, this study ain't it. Yeah, they hit some ridiculous levels when the detector was right in the path of smoke, but, like... duh.

CHiLD-0F-THE-BEAT, you've proven yourself to be very good at finding links, but not so good at understanding what they say. Nothing you've posted has significantly supported your claims in a serious manner; instead, it seems to invalidate them. The example you give for a typical indoor secondhand smoke particulate matter level (measured as the PM2.5) is about 160 ug/m^3, or about 20 times the background level. The highest number quoted for outdoor secondhand smoke is less than 30 ug/m^3, and even the authors of these studies say it is being in close proximity to several smokers for an extended period of time, and on a regular basis -- which is to say a few rare, anomalous situations -- that is of concern.

I feel like you're being intellectually dishonest and trying to justify an irrational phobia.

 

[HCandKROD]

My point still stands. Their location has no bearing on their opinion.

You are correct. My dislike of the poster took over any objectivity. My apologies. I just don't believe in any name calling.

 

[CHiLD-0F-THE-BEAT]

I don't pretend to have all of the answers, however I've done some more reading and can provide some more evidence:

Second-hand smoke has been shown to produce more particulate-matter (PM) pollution than an idling low-emission diesel engine. In an experiment conducted by the Italian National Cancer Institute, three cigarettes were left smoldering, one after the other, in a 60 m³ garage with a limited air exchange. The cigarettes produced PM pollution exceeding outdoor limits, as well as PM concentrations up to 10-fold that of the idling engine.

From Particulate matter from tobacco versus diesel car exhaust: an educational perspective.

The term "third-hand smoke" was recently coined to identify the residual tobacco smoke contamination that remains after the cigarette is extinguished and second-hand smoke has cleared from the air. Preliminary research suggests that by-products of third-hand smoke may pose a health risk, though the magnitude of risk, if any, remains unknown. In October 2011, it was reported that Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital in Alexandria, Louisiana would seek to eliminate third-hand smoke beginning in July 2012, and that employees whose clothing smelled of smoke would not be allowed to work. This prohibition was enacted because third-hand smoke poses a special danger for the developing brains of infants and small children.

Households contaminated by environmental tobacco smoke: sources of infant exposures, A New Cigarette Hazard: Third Hand Smoke.

Passive smoking means to breathe in environmental tobacco smoke (ETS).
ETS contains over 4,000 chemical compounds including 43 known carcinogens.
ETS is a combination of exhaled mainstream smoke and sidestream smoke:
• Mainstream smoke is the smoke that smokers inhale directly from their cigarette. Exhaled mainstream is the smoke that smokers exhale.
• Sidestream smoke comes from the end of a lit cigarette and contains much higher levels of many of the carcinogens and other toxic substances than exhaled mainstream smoke. 85 per cent of ETS in an average room is sidestream.
The degree of exposure to ETS by non-smokers is determined by factors such as proximity to a smoker, the tar level of the cigarettes, the number of cigarettes smoked, the size of the room and length of exposure.

From Passive Smoking Policy Control Guide.

Proposed Identification of Environmental Tobacco Smoke as a Toxic Air Contaminant – Environmental Protection Agency Air Resources Board of the State of California (ARB report)

The ARB measured air concentration of nicotine adjacent to outdoor smoking areas in five locations – an airport, a college campus, a public building, and an amusement park. Eight-hour and one-hour mean concentrations were measured over three days in each location. Concentrations attained relates to the number of cigarettes smoked. (Table 1 refers)

Table 1: Air nicotine levels adjacent to outdoor smoking areas in California, USA.

[table="width: 500, class: grid"]
[tr]
[td]Site Tested[/td]
[td]Eight hour range g/m3[/td]
[td]Cigarettes smoked/hr[/td]
[td]One hour range
g/m3[/td]
[td]Cigarettes smoked/hr[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Airport[/td]
[td]0.48-0.99[/td]
[td]37[/td]
[td]0.36-1.5[/td]
[td]61-75[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]College[/td]
[td]0.013-0.044[/td]
[td]4[/td]
[td]0.017-0.15[/td]
[td]5[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Local Government Centre[/td]
[td]0.042-0.073[/td]
[td]7[/td]
[td]0.039-0.18[/td]
[td]12[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Office Complex[/td]
[td]0.11-0.15[/td]
[td]33[/td]
[td]0.10-0.28[/td]
[td]30[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Amusement Park[/td]
[td]2.4-3.1[/td]
[td]90[/td]
[td]0.66-4.6[/td]
[td]91-148[/td]
[/tr][/table]

This clearly shows that it is possible, even in areas that are completely outdoors, to attain substantial exposure levels to ETS.

Biophysicist James L. Repace measured ambient levels of the class of carcinogenic compound, particulate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PPAH), in indoor and outdoor areas of a cruise ship underway at sea. PPAH are constituents of tobacco smoke. It was found that outdoor smoking areas were contaminated with PPAH by a factor of three compared with the indoor and outdoor areas in which smoking did not occur.
As part of a debate in the journal Tobacco Control Repace explained the atmospheric dispersion of ETS in outdoor settings. In brief, a cigarette smoke plume will rise but rapidly cool therefore losing upward momentum and then subsiding. If there is no wind the smoke will saturate the area. The effect is exacerbated where there are groups of smokers. Even where there is wind, those downwind can be adversely affected.
Repace provides a more detailed analysis of the atmospheric dispersion of ETS in outdoor settings at a University of Maryland campus. The University’s Health Service requested the study to determine whether smoking should be banned within the vicinity of campus building entrances. Repace measured ETS constituent levels including PPAH from both smouldering and smoked cigarettes. PPAH levels ranged from 3.3ng/m3 at a distance of <2 metres from the source to 0.1 ng/m3 at 7 metres from the source. The latter figure equates to normal background levels, the author states. Based on the results of his measurements, Repace recommended that people who are smoking should be kept at least 20 feet from building entrances. Interestingly, Repace found that smokers standing close to a doorway as people enter or depart can result in “smoke being inducted into the building, posing a chronic threat as well as an acute one, to building occupants”.

Research by Klepeis et al
Klepeis et al measured airborne particles emitted from cigarettes at a number of settings including open-air cafes, outdoor pubs and footpaths. According to the researchers, this is the first study of outdoor ETS exposure to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. They concluded that a person sitting or standing next to a smoker in an outdoor setting can inhale smoke that is many times more concentrated than background air pollution levels. For example the study found the average respirable particle level was approximately 30 μg m-3 with sharp spikes sometimes during smoking reaching 1000 μg m-3. Based on their results the researchers concluded that outdoor tobacco smoke levels could reach the equivalent of those inside a tavern where smokers are present.

Research by Boffi et al
Boffi et al found that in the city of Copenhagen in Denmark, measured ETS-related particulate matter (PM2.5) reached significant values outdoors in different parts of the city where smokers gathered to smoke. In one location in front of a conference centre where people smoked “mean PM2.5 was 17.8 ± 7.5 μg m-3 with a peak of 98 μg m-3”. This compared unfavourably with the PM2.5 measurement along a motorway of 4.6 ± 0.7 μg m-3 with a peak value of 8.7 μg m-3.

The above research by the California EPA, Repace, Klepeis et al and Boffi et al strongly suggests that there are risks to health from exposure to ETS in particular outdoor locations.

From The health evidence for smoke bans in outdoor settings - The Cancer Council NSW, June 2007.

All I know is that I have asthma, and my asthma symptoms gets worse when I am around smoke - whether that smoke is from a cigarette or a fire, or incense. I don't like it and I would prefer if I could prevent it from affecting my health. I don't think that's too much to ask.

 

[atara]

So in other words: screw evidence, screw everyone else's rights, policy should be dictated by my psychosomatic maladies? Dude, people ought to have the right to exist in public. What you're asking is excessive and absurd, and not backed up by evidence. Again you've posted links which do not support your point and serve merely to take up space in your post. If people want to smoke outside, that's none of your business: you'e some dude with asthma, not the God of sunshine. How ludicrous and abstruse do your self- justifications have to get before you will drop them.

The title of the thread is "smoking in public". Your first link is about policies inside a hospital. I think we left Poe's law and went right on to Jerry Springer.

 

[J.Wallace]

I pay and have very good health insurance so don't worry about paying my medical bills.

So, let me get this straight. Just because you feel comfortable knowing your future medical expenses will be taken care of, you feel perfectly fine smoking something that is known for a fact to be extremely detrimental to ones health?

And with this whole "If nobody smoked we'd feel the tax burden", that's just bullshit. On paper, yes in essence if Tobacco was not a cash crop we'd feel a burden, but don't you think something else would take it's place? Since the dawn of time, men and women have used substances to alter their perception. It is without a doubt in my mind that if Tobacco wasn't around we'd be regulating some other substance in it's place, perhaps even Cannabis.

I smoke and hate it honestly. I hate the idea that I smell like smoke, or that my breathe stinks from tobacco and my teeth turn yellow. It's clearly one of the nastiest habits someone can pick up. Still, it's your right to do so and I'll fight for that right. Just don't impose it on me.

 

[motherofearth]

Who said anything about slavery? I've picked many,many rows of tobacco when I was younger. I was merely pointing out the fact that tobacco was and is a cash crop. When the people from England and Europe first settled this county it was a very important commodity. Oh, on the point of slavery, only one half of one % of people in North Carolina owned slaves. That was a rich man's luxury. The rest of the good folks in the Tarheel State did things themselves and still do!! Stop twisting my words please.

You completely missed my point. Which had nothing to do w/ N. Carolina. I'm making a joke of your argument because I find it idiotic.

With all due respect.

 

[tambourine-man]

I work in Public Health and generally support the anti-tobacco measures that have been introduced over the years (restrictions on advertising, smoking bans in the workplace and bars/restaurants). However, you guys should be aware that the push to ban smoking in public places (outside hospitals, civic centres, parks, etc) has more to do with 'de-normalisation' of the practice, than it does to do with any genuine threat of ETS.

And if we are to quote studies, the general rule of thumb is that 'proof' (if it is ever found), is not located in the Results section, but in the Methods section.

 

[HCandKROD]

You completely missed my point. Which had nothing to do w/ N. Carolina. I'm making a joke of your argument because I find it idiotic.

With all due respect.

No, I didn't miss your point in the earlier post. You were spoiling for an argument that I won't give you. Long story short, most of you kids don't remember the days when people could smoke in freedom. I was only reminiscing about another time. I was also pointing out the fact that tobacco paid for a lot of family vacations and allowed by father to retire at the age of 50. Tobacco was an important part of many Southern people's lives. I didn't mean to start an all out name calling session and bad feelings amongst the community. I appreciate all persons input. Thanks

 

[kingtweaker92]

people are pussies man.
punk brown nose lil bitches.

you dont like my smoke, move around clown!


-KING

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

I used to smoke socially as a teenager maybe once or a few times a moth while out drinking with friends, and I tried smoking daily just 1-2 cigs a day while on vacation in Spain for about 2 weeks, and I'd smoke a cigar a few times a year but I quit it all by 19.

I have friends that smoke when they drink or who smoke daily and it's their choice. My ex smoked and I didn't care if he did it in his house or outside when we were on dates but I didn't let him smoke in my car. I dated other people who smoked and if it was their car or their house I was fine with them smoking but I didn't let anyone smoke indoors at my house or in my car.

I have friends who are social smokers or non-smokers who think that it's odd that you can't smoke in most bars anymore.

If other people want to smoke it's OK and it's their choice just like it's my choice not to smoke.

When I've worked at jobs where people who also worked there could smoke indoors I just wouldn't go into the smoking area or smoke room.

 

[GodSpeedK]

I'm glad the smoking ban came into action, because I probably wouldn't have quit otherwise. Such a pointless habit.