De hemel valt niet naar beneden
Stug blijven de anti-rokenorganisaties volhouden dat ventilatie geen oplossing kan zijn voor de rookproblematiek in de horeca. Er zou geen veilige ondergrens zijn.
In een reeks artikelen gaat ventilatiespecialist Jim St John in op de achtergronden van de ventilatieproblematiek, waarbij hij in deze eerste aflevering beschrijft wat er bekend is over de samenstelling en concentraties van omgevingsrook.
by Jim St John
May 11, 2004
Over the last 15 years the tobacco prohibitionist cartel—with millions in
funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and other pharmaceutical
interests—has been highly successful in scaring the hell out of the general
public about exposure to “secondhand smoke”. They’ve turned America into a
flock of “Chicken Littles” who believe in fairy tales that the sky is falling
anywhere someone lights up in public. That perception is now a reality we
often encounter where smoking is permitted indoors.
This and future postings will be about indoor air quality—the facts and
the myths. The observations and suggestions are based on 25 years of
experience in indoor air quality engineering for all kinds of residential and
commercial environments…and lots of real-world experience abating tobacco smoke
in homes and businesses.
Before we talk about the mechanical stuff, we gotta talk first about what
is in the air, how much if it there is, and what we’re going to call it.
The prohibitionists prefer the pejorative term “secondhand smoke”.
Alternatively, decades ago someone coined the term “environmental tobacco smoke”
or ETS. ETS takes up less bandwidth, so that’s what we’ll use on this
page.
ETS is an aerosol of particulates, liquid droplets and gas-phase vapors,
the composition of which changes rapidly as it cools and dilutes. Because
the particulates range in size from barely visible to invisible submicron size,
they can build up in poorly ventilated rooms and can remain as respirable
suspended particulates (RSP) for long periods of time. That’s how we get
the smoky haze that irritates non-smokers and even smokers themselves sometimes,
and that’s what gives ammo to tobacco-haters.
The prohibitionists, including billionaire bully New York City Mayor
Bloomberg, have a habit of broadcasting bizarre exaggerations about how many
“cigarette equivalents” a bartender will inhale at work…anywhere from two to
four unfiltered packs per shift. At two packs per shift, that means the
bartender sucks down the equivalent of a cigarette every 12 minutes!
Huh? This is one of the big fat lies about ETS, the result of statistical
manipulation by drug-funded anti-tobacco activist researchers, communicated to
us by lazy and compliant news media.
For a long time it has been known that restaurant and bar workers are
exposed to approximately 1/1000 of what the prohibitionists claim. Of
course, such a finding was probably funded by the tobacco industry, right?
Wrong. In 1975, Harvard researchers undertook air sampling measurements in
smoking-permitted workplaces, with funding from the Massachusetts Lung
Association. Professor Emeritus Melvin First wrote about it in a May 2003
letter to the Wall Street Journal:
In regard to your May 16 story “Passive Smoke Doesn’t Kill – Or Does
It?”: James Enstroms’s finding that exposure to environmental smoke cannot
be associated with increased risk of cancer and heart disease comes as no
surprise to me as I authored, with a colleague, a study published in the New
England Journal of Medicine (292:844-845, 1975) detailing the results of
inconspicuous air samplings at restaurants, cocktail lounges, transportation
terminals, etc. “to evaluate the health implications for non-smokers” and found
that the concentrations of tobacco smoke were equivalent to smoking about .004
cigarettes per hour while in these facilities. It should be recalled that
smoking in public places was normal and prevalent a quarter century
ago.
Nor am I surprised at the scurrilous responses of the concerned voluntary
health associations. Publication of the paper cited above resulted in many
angry voices on the phone wanting to learn the funding source, although it was
noted that it was funded “by the Massachusetts Lung Association and its local
affiliates.” That is another interesting tale – the Lung Association put
our report in a drawer and never released it. It is also curious that none
of the surgeon general’s reports ever mentioned this study.
Nor am I surprised that an attempt is being made to trash Dr. Enstrom’s
conclusions because the study was funded in part by money from tobacco
interests. Does this mean that all the researchers funded by anti-smoking
agencies are biased in the opposite direction? I trust not. Such
charges are deeply insulting to academics in good standing.
For the record I am a non-smoker and as a responsible health professional
I do not advocate smoking.”
Melvin W. First, Sc. D.
Professor of Environmental
Health and
Engineering, Emeritus
Harvard School of Public Health
Cambridge,
Massachusetts
Since that time, similar studies have come to the same
conclusion, most of them funded all or in part by the tobacco industry.
The reason for this is obvious: the tobacco industry liked the results that
could be duplicated without fudging the numbers. The anti-smoking
industry, and the pharmaceutical companies that support their activities, will
never again conduct atmospheric sampling studies supported by lab science
because the results aren’t scary at all. Instead, prohibitionists rely on
statistical estimates of exposure, based on measurements of sidestream vs
mainstream smoke, and inflating the numbers into a bloated statistical model
that has no real world evidence to back it up. But their strategy of
“science by press release” serves them quite well. Who needs facts when
hungry news outlets gobble up their scary stories?
The bottom line is that with no extraordinary ventilation or air
filtration, bar and restaurant workers inhale less than four one-hundredths of a
cigarette per eight-hour shift, well below the EPA’s claimed three-per day
threshold of risk.
When we get into social and political conversations about the alleged ETS
health risk to workers and the general public, air sampling studies should
always be on the table, and given much more weight than epidemiological
statistical fiddling by anti-tobacco activists. People who smoke need not
feel guilty that they are complicit in “killing” workers and others in public
places. Proprietors and employers need not fall back on libertarian
arguments to justify exposing employees and customers to allegedly dangerous
levels of ETS–because that is not the fact of the matter. Nobody is being
killed. But common sense dictates that business operators be smart and
take measures to reduce the perception of hazard, which is the political
reality.
Next week, we’ll start looking at ways to manage both the perception and
the reality of indoor air quality. In the meantime, you might be
interested in these two articles published in Pacific Northwest daily
newpapers:
