Spreading the terror
A while ago, I came across a question posed on a website.
How long do you have to ‘second hand’ smoke before you develop lung cancer? I heard it can happen if you’re around a smoker at least one time. And what if you’re also twenty years old? When will the lung cancer be developed then? Is there still a chance of getting lung cancer if you’re riding in the car with all the windows open? Or if you’re in an open space?
What struck me about this was the appalling ignorance out there on the subject of cancer and smoking. This is a lack of knowledge that is fostered and nurtured by the anti-smoker brigade, despite the fact that it terrifies people into believing the most absurd ideas.
In the case above, the questioner seems to give credence to the idea that a person can die from cancer after being in the presence of a smoker just once.` I decided to sniff around a little more, and found such definitive claims that “smoking just one cigarette can cause cancer” and one real classic – “If you want to kill yourself, you don’t even have to smoke. Just stand next to someone who does, each time they go outside for a cigarette. In about a year or so you will be unable to breathe without a respirator and without intensive medical treatment every day, you will die pretty early in life.” These idiotic statements are grist to the mill for the Anti Brigade as, despite the fact that people are being terrified for no reason whatsoever, they promote the vilification of the smoker.
To return to the original question, the questioner wanted to know the risks of riding in a car with all the windows open. It is laughable to suggest that there is any concentration whatsoever of smoke under that circumstance, yet I recently read somewhere [maybe someone out there can tell me where?] that ASH have stated categorically that opening car windows does not clear the air in a car, as the smoke immediately blows back in again. That statement is so patently absurd that a five year old would laugh at it, yet it is put out into the public domain to foster further fears.
Let us assume for one brief moment that cigarettes are as deadly as they claim, and that sitting in a car with the windows wide open can cause cancer, then can someone please explain to me how the primary smoker is still alive after his or her first twenty cigarettes?
The reason of course that the Antis love such misinformation is that it fosters a fear, not of cigarettes but of the smoker.
I baffles me how the Antis can gat away with such fear mongering, when the truth is out there.
Would you accept the conclusions of the BMJ? A study of over 100,000 people over a period of 39 years? That would seem to be fairly comprehensive, and their findings? “The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality”
Would you accept the findings of the World Health Organisation?
Or would you rather believe that spending a day in the open air with a smoker is going to lead to a horrible, painful death?
Please, no more blogs about smoking, smoking bans, smoking paraphenalia, smoking anything. We get it already!!
It is absurd – but then again all propaganda is absurd. These anti smoking nazis will use any misinformation to further their agenda. Apparently their cause is so just that truth and honesty is not required.
Makes you wonder what else we’re being lied to for our own good.
Stay on the case grandad – fuck the begreudgers, we’ve had to listen to them harping on and on for years about how we’re damaging our own health and then say we’re harming theirs. Question their dubious statistics and you’re asked to shut up.
Paulo1 – Sure don’t I stick lots of other stuff up as well? The only reason I go on about it is that very few people get it already.
Dessiegee – In fairness to Paulo1, I don’t think he’s an anti – just someone who is tired of the subject? Only he can answer that one. Hitler must be laughing in his grave though. A good chunk of his propaganda lives on!
Grandpa, from a half Irish Grandma in Texas we salute you, we love your straight forward no nonsense approach to life. Keep up the good writing.
I think you’ve just hit on the perfect answer to overcrowding Grandad ..
Get into any Lift, board any Bus or Tube Train, join any queue & announce loudly .. “I am a Smoker, if you choose to remain here, you run the risk of catching cancer” …. I bet you’d have the Lift, Bus, Tube, Queue to yourself in no time ..
Mind you it does do away with the wicked pleasure of letting a “silent-but-deadly” one go to achieve the same effect .. 😉
Aw! Thanks, BK. Amidst all the slings and arrows chucked in this direction, It’s nuce to get a wee bouquet from time to time. 🙂
Haddock – A nice idea. Unfortunately I was never very good at the SBDs. I tend to be rather less silent and more like an ammuntion dump going up. I take pride in that fact. So maybe I’ll just wave my pipe around the lift or queue to see what happens? I will now leave the floor open for all the wise cracks about that statement.
“Unfortunately I was never very good at the SBDs. I tend to be rather less silent and more like an ammuntion dump going up” ..
More practice required Grandad ..
Going “noisy” takes all the fun out of playing Dutch ovens …. 😉 🙂
PAULO. He went a couple of days. Think yourself fortunate indeed. OCD ? Shame really. It would be interesting if he just once picked up a newspaper and ranted about something different. But then we would just get the dog, the cavy or the gubmint.
Those articles make a rarely heard point. I can’t say that I’m a huge fan of second hand smoke, but I find the shriller anti-smoking claims ridiculous to behold.
So that’s why my car still smells like I just lit up even after 5 years of not smoking. It’s retaining all the old smoke ‘cuz it blows right back in? Wait, I only bought this rig 2 years ago. Must be someone else’s smoke then.
The thing that bothers me the most is these FUD spreaders actually know that a large group of people will actually believe this stuff they spew all over the place (and they will too).
Smoke or don’t smoke; it’s your choice, but time to move on to the more interesting and amusing comments now, eh grandad? Please!
Hello Grandad! First time here… nice place you’ve got! :>
Tom Laprade from Canada found you and sent me an email with road directions and I figured I’d join in some of the fun if I’m invited. :>
I wanted to speak to the question you quoted at the beginning. In parts:
“How long do you have to ‘second hand’ smoke before you develop lung cancer?
According to the EPA figures (which the Antismokers usually love unless they’re really explained) “secondhand smoke exposure” increases your lung cancer risk by 19%. Pretty scary eh? Well, not once you realize that the base rate of lung cancer in a nonsmoker is about 4 in 1,000 and that the “exposure” means 40 years of exposure for at least 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (and/or 8 – 16 hours a day 7 days a week at home). That means that on average, that ONE lung cancer develops for every 40,000 years of exposure!
“I heard it can happen if you’re around a smoker at least one time.”
IF you accept the EPA figures as fact (in reality they’re probably exaggerated, but I’ll still accept them for this argument rather than dispute them here) if you were around a smoker for one time for a full hour, you would have an extra chance of getting lung cancer of about… hmmm…. (1 divided by 1,000 multiplied by 40 years multiplied by 365 days multiplied by 10 hours avg.) … that’s 1 chance out of 146,000,000 (one hundred and forty-six million). Of course that’s only true if you are in the fairly poorly ventilated and poorly air-filtrated conditions of the 1950s and 60s and 70s when the base exposure data was drawn from. Today, if we make the reasonable assumption that the air is ciculated/filtered about three or four times as much in a smoking environment the chances would be more like 1 in a half billion.
“And what if you’re also twenty years old? When will the lung cancer be developed then?”
If you’re one of the 12 unlucky people on the entire planet to get lung cancer from such an exposure it will likely happen between 20 and 40 years in the future. On the other hand, since very few people, even lifelong smokers, develop lung cancer before the age of 60, your actual chances would probably be much lower… maybe one in 5 billion or one in 50 billion.
Is there still a chance of getting lung cancer if you’re riding in the car with all the windows open? Or if you’re in an open space?
The dilution would go increase by a factor of at least 10 or maybe even a hundred. So the chances would then go down to between 1 in 500 billion and 1 in 5 trillion.
Since the entire universe is only 10 billion years old I don’t think you have much to worry about.
And don’t even get me STARTED on “third hand smoke”
:>
Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
Indeed, Michael, you are more than welcome! Your book is on my “books to read” list, but I make no apologies for not buying it yet, as I am quite sure you haven’t read mine!! 😉
I was talking to a friend today who was complaining about the frequency of my smoking posts, and I explained to him that in fact I couldn’t really give a toss about the smoking ban here, as most of the time it doesn’t affect me. What really gets my goat though is the lies that the Anti brigade get away with. It’s bad enough that the general population accepts these lies, but when politicians and even the medical profession bow down without a single question, then I begin to see red.
As a pensionerand a nobody, there is little I can do except to carry on bleating in the hopes that I may at the very least plant that seed of doubt in people’s minds.
Bleating fits well within our nonexistent budgets Grandad! :> Although some of the Antismokers out there are pushing hard to get control of the Internet on this subject (They’re currently appealing to the WHO under the World Framework Convention on Tobacco Control that the internet is accessible by children under 21 who might see message boards like yours.)
I agree strongly with you regarding the lies however, and that’s the direct subject of one of my main outreach/activist tools, “The Stiletto” subtitled “The Lies Behind The Smoking Bans.”
It’s a quick read, designed to be printed by folks for free distribution and bound in those clear plastic slide-grip term paper covers students use and left for reading on bars and with cafe managers etc. It’s one-sided and big print designed to grab attention, but its facts are accurate and their presentation is honest. It’s available at:
http://encyclopedia.smokersclub.com/257.html
And I invite any of your readers who might have any specific, substantive criticisms of anything within it to please post them publicly here for all to see. I am open about who I am, what my “competing interest” might be claimed to be, and I stand firmly behind every word that I write. I’ll check back now that I’ve found this cozy spot. Nice fireplace you have in the corner there by the way….
🙂
Michael