get a clue doc
the evidence is overwhelming
shs is even more deadly than primary smoking
i hear you can look it up anywhere
how can you defend it in any circumstances?
i swear - people are willing to overlook the absolutely ludicrous arguments of tc just because they've been conditioned to hate the smell of smoke or the sight of a smoker
i've said it before
beam me up scotty
the overwhelming evidence seems to prove to me that millions of people all over the world survived and thrived in a world where people smoked cigarettes freely - but we ignore what is before us plain as day in favor of dubious research results
I, personally, was most disturbed to read Dr. Siegel's statement: "First, it could be that anti-smoking groups are just disturbed by the exposure of kids to smoke in cars (which they should be) and want to get rid of it, but they have no intention of promoting banning smoking in homes.".
Exactly why should they be concerned?
You have stated that the transitory nature of exposure in a vehicle poses no threat(And this is a presumed sealed car, which by no means exists anywhere but in a museum bearing Howard Hugh's modified car), so why should they be concerned?
Secondly, it sounds more everyday like you are in favor of intruding into the home for these measures, and still, based on unproven risks, not even a true causal problem, but an insignificant risk, less than standard drinking water, as you yourself have stated.
How is ANY of this justified good Dr.?
One other thing, I remember reading, many times, about the study, the largest done to date, I believe, that found a 22% less risk factor for children of smokers to contract "smoking related" diseases, who is abusing these children now Dr?
Taking away a possibly beneficial exposure for what? Hate's sake?
"For Hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee"
10 points to whoever names the source of the quote LOL.
And no, it's not Bill, or Carl, but I have heard similar phrasing from them
Dr. Siegel,
Let's face it, that is their goal. Anti-smokers pretty much fall into two groups, the ones who want to see tobacco became part of the extremely successful War on Drugs and those who want tobacco to be slightly less regulated than Plutonium. That is pretty much it.
I understand why you have to be cautious with most of your statements. You have personal and professional reasons to do so, but quit acting so shocked. They did not care about civil liberties or private property in the first place.
Shocked. I'm shocked I tell ya.
*sigh*
Shocked. I'm shocked I tell ya.
*sigh*
I can't wait for the first lawsuit to happen- imagine a kid who grows up to get cancer- realizes that laws were made to prevent exposure in the car, but not at home... obviously the city knew the hazards, and stated they had an obligation to protect him... so they should have also protected him at home, right? Wonder how much the kid may get from the right jury...
Second- I think any kid who can show that the behavior of his parents had an equal risk to that of SHS exposure could also sue such a law making body- after all, they said it was important to protect the kids from SHS exposure with xxx risk over xxx exposure... therefore they should also do so for every other equal-risk behavior, right? I mean, they knew that the other behaviors also carried the same risks, didn't they?
After all, it's for the Childreeeennn.... we should do *ANYTHING* at all to protect our children from all things of this risk level (especially/only from SHS for some weird reason), right?!?!
Jerry-was it a Shakespeare quote? just guessing here.
a11en:
wait til "the children" will sue the parents/govt/public health for even "allowing them to be born" because of the inherent "risk" of being born means someday you die???
How much longer are we gonna put up with these nazis? Huh? Huh?
"For Hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee"
Kahn said it to Kirk in the movie "Star Trek The Wrath of Kahn"...
Tyranny; it's "FOR THE CHILLRUNS"
Anyone who thinks this is even a remotely good idea, would do well to remember this quote, and the source of it:
"When an opponent declares, "I will not come over to your side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community."
- Adolph Hitler
Tobacco Control Advocates should celebrate. They have been able to secure the political will of the public to protect children from parents who in their homes abuse children with the deadly fumes of their addiction. Are these parents any different than nazis who attempted to exterminate jews in gas chambers?
The only difference is that the Germans were not killing their own children!
Well they may as well just lock me up and throw away the key now.........after I throw another log into the woodstove 
Not to mention the oil lamps and candles we have to use for light when the power goes out.....oh and that's right I occassionally cook on that woodstove.
Of course that would be ignoring the fact that apparently my home is well enough ventilated that none of my smoke or CO detectors been set off by the woodstove or cigarette smoke or even the more voluminous smoke from my husband's occassional cigar. The smoke detectors going off from me cooking habanero chile peppers is a whole other topic
I truly think the so-called tobacco control movement is doomed because of this assinine nonsense. Even the idiots of tobacco control, and they are ALL idiots, actually do understand the absolute unconstitutionality of such ludicrousy, even though they will not admit. The proof of this knowlege is in the language of various laws and ordinances banning smoking in "public" places. In order to get around such pesky things as private property rights, new definitions for words such as "public" and "private" had to be written. If you look at them closely, most (if not all) clearly state the bans are not on "private" residences, unless used for a business purpose, or a "private" vehicle unless used for a business.
Y'all never had a legit reason to use government force to ban smoking in private businesses (bars and restaurants or offices) and have NO call to do such in homes or cars, and probably don't have a legal leg to stand on in your attempts.
In the late 1990s, Webster Groves, Missouri considered a ban on smoking in private homes, when children are present, but rejected it.
But let's consider that approximately 10% more smokers are asthmatics than the general adult population, so it is more likely that children of smokers have inherited genes which predispose them to develop asthma. Now, that we have identified many of the genes related to developing asthma, we should test for the markers in children used in studies which conclude SHS causes asthma, to be sure that the effect is not really due to the gentic predisposition, and not the smoke. The same for the allegation SHS causes poorer lung function in children.
Second, adult smoking rates in inner cities are about 30% higher than overall, therefore children of smokers are 30% more likely to be inner city residents. It needs to be ruled out that the inner city residency is not the real reason why SHS studies of children find more asthma. again, lung function too.
Third, smokers tend to be of lower educational level, and may not realize the importance of cleanliness as it relates to dust mites, etc, which excerbacate asthma.
Fourth, smokers tend to be of lower economic status, and are more likely uninsured and therefore, their children may not be getting proper medical attention to treat asthma.
The SIDS argumemnt is stupid. First, SIDS by definition is any unexplained death of an infant. Most SIDS deaths occur in hospitals, where smoking has not been allowed for more than 20 years. Infants do not have developed immune systems and therefore do not manifest symptoms when they get an infection.SIDS researcher, Dr Goldwater, found that among all cases of SIDS he examined, e.coli infections were the real culprit, not SHS.
More cases of ashtma, lower respiratiry infection, ear infections, occur in todays children than decades ago when many more kids were exposed to smoke. If SHS were the culprit, these conditions would be declining in children. Time-trend studies in children are even more meaningful, than in adults, because children cannot have latent effects from exposure decades ago.
I agree that kids exposed to smoke get more of these conditions, this, however, does not mean that the smoke caused the condition. Common simultaneous circumstances of smoke and real (and known) risk factors for these conditions in kids exist.
So when smoking is banned in cars, that is not scientifically defensable, same for homes. Dave K
I went to the Echelon Mall in Voorhees, NJ, around 1PM today. New Jersey is thinking about the same kind of law for cars in which "children" are riding. To make a long story short, There were about 8 or 10 "children" (I guess 14 - 16 years old) standing outside the mall entrance. Yes, they were smoking. These laws are becomming laughable. It is not "for the children". It is for control and greed with some hatred thrown in. The "children" are mocking our laws, and we knew it would come to this, as it is the law of human nature for the "children" to rebel.
There are also racial discrepencies in the profile of likelhood of chlidren geting these conditions, irrespective of smoking status of parents.
Since smoking is more common among some races than others, then kids exposure to smoke and the racial risk factors need to be isolated, and characteized before any conclusions about SHS can be drawn. Dave K
Dr Siegel,you are wasting your breath suggesting they follow the same idealism regarding,alcohol,obesity,you name it.It refers to smoking and that is all they want to subdue and dominate.So where do you stand ?What is going to be your arguement BEFORE they attempt to kick in someones front door to save the poor,pathetic creatures called children,even decrepit 17 y.olds.Well it's just fine that science is just totally ignored and the rule of the loonies and their demands are just met.My real thoughts about Tobacco Control cannot be printed and i'm not going to give you the opportunity to zap them.
Dr. Siegel wrote:
"That would open the door to regulating all kinds of risks to which parents expose their children."
Trampolines. Thank God someone is finally going to do something about trampolines (and dozens of other things).
Trampoline Injury Facts
According to the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS), 246,875 medically treated trampoline injuries occur annually in the U.S. Of this total, 186,405 of these injuries occurred among children aged 14 or younger.
http://www.fscip.org/tramp.html
Dave K, you said:
I agree that kids exposed to smoke get more of these conditions, this, however, does not mean that the smoke caused the condition.
While I agree with your contention that there is no correlation about smoke being the cause, I don't agree with you that kids exposed get more of the conditions, primarily because of an earlier statement of yours about the smoking rates being higher in inner city areas, along with the economic and educational levels being lower in smokers than non.
I grew up in NYC, and asthma, bronchitis, ear infections, and the rest of the list of illness supposed caused by SHS exposure were practically non-existent. And I grew up in a typical blue collar neighborhood of cops and firemen, etc, and most of the parents did smoke.
Now I live in a rural community, which is pretty low on the scale when it comes to economic and educational levels, and very few of the parents of young kids I know smoke....yet they are all the ones that seem to forever be sick.
The above comment to Dave K. is from me - I don't know why my name didn't appear 
BAN TRAMPOLINES
Slightly off topic, but I heard today that California is thinking of making spanking your children illegal. I am not big on spanking, though I know a few who needs a good swat, as I think that someone should have slapped the likes of the Bills and Carls up against a wall once or twice and maybe we wouldn't be hearing from them so often. Now I dreaming. So, after hearing that I have decided that it has come time to either sterilize all women or else we just hand our newborns over to the health police and let them raise them until the kids becomes legal age. I am just thinking of the children and I want to protect them from any risk or harm. Should we start a petition and send it to Congress? I bet that Ted Kennedy would jump on the bandwagon as he is a person that we should all emulate.
Just don't let him drive over any bridges.
"Thankful kids, when they reach voting age, might recall the lungs-saving kindness"
Only if by then people are permitted to even think!
Interesting observation, RevLee. Perhaps the government should pass laws that prohibit children from smoking at home, to protect their parents from second hand smoke!
Hmmm. Suppose we have a little family of mother, father and son. Mama and papa are smoking. One day they get worried that their son may tell them off for smoking. What idea might they come up with?
Before I go off topic with an Enstrom/Research Funding update that's important, I remembered that I have other recent comments by Banzhaf on the topic of coming into our homes (courtesy of the same reporter who recently spotlighted Dr. Siegel):
Secondhand smoke: a public nuisance?
Some cities move to curb smoking at home
Inside Bay Area - October 23, 2006
By Suzanne Bohan
http://www.insidebayarea.com/san...news/
ci_4535322
While many have come to accept and even welcome smoke-free public places like restaurants and bars, anti-smoking laws reaching into the home enter new territory. Editorials on anti-smoking initiatives have decried a "nanny state" taking hold in the country.
But Banzhaf, the attorney, said such concerns ignore existing restrictions on home life.
"They are making an assumption that if you do something in your home, it's protected from the rule of law," he said. In fact, laws prohibit a range of activities, he said, such as walking around disrobed inside one's home but within view of neighbors, or storing explosives. Nor could a neighbor spew asbestos-laden dust or emit plumes of benzene vapors, a highly toxic chemical known to cause cancer, while cleaning machinery in a home garage.
Furthermore, courts have consistently ruled that citizens have no privileged right to smoke. "The idea of there being some right to smoke just doesn't ring true," Banzhaf said. Nor do pleas that the home front provides the last refuge to smoke in peace sway him.
"The mere fact that I enjoy it, that it's relaxing, is irrelevant," Banzhaf said.
-------------
Aside from everything else one can point out as wrong here, note how Banzhaf gets "privilege" and "right" in there in one breath. He's got the defined words of privileges and rights all neatly wrapped up there and claims to own both.
Nevertheless, we don't get our natural rights from other men who appoint themselves the job. And of course he and any others who like to mangle the Constitution do so by trying to argue that if it's not enumerated then we don't have this right or that one. Meanwhile, the lack of enumeration means the exact opposite as intended by our Founding Fathers. To follow Banzhaf's logic then ALL that exists -- chewing gum, listening to certain kinds of music, wearing baseball hats!, and on and on -- have to be listed in a federal document and a determination made on each.
Gabz wrote:
"BAN TRAMPOLINES"
I totally agree, but we have to protect children from schools abusing them too. Sports. And football's first:
Pediatrics for Parents, Sept, 1991
1990 was a special season for high school football. For the first time in 60 years there were no deaths directly related to the game...There were three indirect football deaths, down from nine in 1989.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/ar...ept/
ai_11600070
August 24, 2005
The Arizona Brain Injury Association has just issued the following press release in which it states that they expect 10% of the state's high school football players to suffer a concussion this season.
http://www.braininjurylawblog.co...ing-
season.html
Each year, more than 448,000 football-related injuries to youths under age 15 are treated in hospitals, doctors' offices, clinics, ambulatory surgery centers and hospital emergency rooms.
http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/fact/
t...category=Sports
Any kid with a football helmet is an abused child. Period.
Here's the Enstrom/Research Funding info of late:
Heretic or Martyr?
Epidemiologist Still Scorned for Questioning Passive Smoking's Harm
Advance Magazine (Dec. '06)
Vol. 19 •Issue 26 • Page 12
http://respiratory-care.advancew...l&AD=12-11-
2006
[Opening two paragraphs]
Judging whether James Enstrom, PhD, MPH, is more sinned against than sinning might come down to whether you smoke or not, agree with smoking bans or not, have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or not, or treat COPD-ravaged lungs for a living or not.
As ADVANCE readers do the latter, they may already know about Enstrom. They may agree with critics who consider him, at best, a lone voice in the wilderness, at worst, an infuriating heretic. To his supporters in academia though, Enstrom is an objective scientist attacked because he presents research findings that happen to run counter to mainstream ideology.
--------
And here, Glantz -- whose arrogantly presumptive headline last week was "UC Regents to Vote to Decline Tobacco Money" -- gets a booty kicking
UC regents delay decision on tobacco ban
Contra Costa Times - January 18, 2007
http://www.contracostatimes.com/...ws/
16490510.htm
[Excerpts]
University of California leaders today delayed a decision on whether UC researchers can continue to accept money from tobacco companies.
After a spirited discussion, a Board of Regents committee postponed its vote until May so faculty members could have more time to come to a consensus. The issue has divided faculty across the state.
But regents' concerns over limiting academic freedom appeared to turn sentiment against Glantz and Regent John Moores, who proposed the ban.
JustTheFacts wrote:
"To follow Banzhaf's logic then ALL that exists -- chewing gum, listening to certain kinds of music, wearing baseball hats!, and on and on -- have to be listed in a federal document and a determination made on each."
Does anyone know Banzhaf's home phone number? I want to make a bologna sandwich, but I want to check first to see if it's okay.
I mentioned on another board before that our state AG made a statement in regards to hunting and fishing that we residents had the implied right to hunt and fish because we could before our state became a state.
That means the use of tobacco is an implied right too.
Once we start intruding into the private home to protect children from merely the increased risk of illness, we have crossed a line that should not be crossed.
Sorry Doc, you crossed that line with the first workplace ban. Adults in an office actually have more choice to stay there than do children in the home.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to you, we've been telling you all along this is where it was going.
What the Journal News does not appear to understand - and this is critical - is that secondhand smoke is not akin to child abuse because it usually does not involve harm; it merely involves increased risk of illness.
Can you please then explain to me why you still support some bans, given that even for adults there is NO harm, but only increased risk?
Doc, I hate to point this out to you, but these last couple of postings of yours have shown your own contradictions, and to me at least, your fighting desperately to hold on to what you have believed for 20+ years.
Someone pointed out earlier how the obvious in your face proof (us baby boomers) is totally ignored while you all spout and push your so-called science (which you continually debunk yourself). Personally I think the reason you all overlook the obvious is because you do know where the real causes are and to go after those would mean everyone, including yourselves, having to change the way they do things and live..........something none of you care to do. So instead you go after what the minority of the population enjoy, and pat yourselves on the back with your "protecting the health" and "for the children" rhetoric.
I for one, am fed up with all this "holier than thou" crap, and I will NOT go down quietly.
Lynda -
These positions aren't actually inconsistent. The intrusion into the home is not justified, in my opinion, unless there is direct, immediate, and severe harm to the child. Thus, I oppose smoking bans in the home.
However, for workplace safety regulations, I believe that government intrusion IS justified to reduce risks of ilness and injury, not necessarily only when there is immediate harm.
It is a patriotic duty to maim un statutory de facto law.
The most disrespected and defacto law was the 1975 national 55 MPH speed limit. in my lifetime was the only time that I wittnessed the nation at war with a de facto law.
Today the national speed limit is what the interstate system was designed for in 1956............
I am looking for a smoke kop detector. any on the market yet?
Dr Siegel :
"However, for workplace safety regulations, I believe that government intrusion IS justified to reduce risks of ilness and injury, not necessarily only when there is immediate harm."
In my opinion there's the rub to your being a supporter of workplace bans.
Can you please clarify for me what "immediate harm" means. Afterall you state that the only way to get damage from SHS is long term, and high exposure. Yet I don't hear you mentioning quantities, or time in the workplace (just immediate harm).
Why mention chronic long term exposure in some areas, then say the workplace is an immediate problem? I'm Confused
LOL James re the bologna sandwich and for helping to make my point.
Dr. Siegel, perhaps you should consider submitting a paper here:
http://www.healthpromotionethics.eu/
Conference 2007
Welcome to the official website of the 2007 conference on the ethics of health promotion: SETTING AN ETHICAL AGENDA FOR HEALTH PROMOTION, hosted by the Institute for Law, Ethics & Society (In Rem) at Ghent University and co-organized by the departments of Public Health at Ghent University and at the Free University of Brussels and by the Flemish Insitute for Healht Promotion (VIG). The conference is supported by the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE).
http://www.allconferences.com/co...20061002045008/
Despite the moral motivations the domain of health promotion practice is littered with ethical pitfalls.
...Another domain where ethical analysis is required has to do with the numerous adverse and perverse side effects health promotion interventions can generate, viz. victim blaming, stigmatization, medicalization etcetera.
This conference attempts to bring together scholars from both the fields of ethics and health promotion in order to identify and to examine the ethical issues that are at stake within the context of health promotion.
The organising committee of the conference invites papers for oral presentation on the following topics:
- the moral necessity of tackling health inequalities
- the use of coercion in public health interventions
- the role of health literacy in avoiding paternalism in health promotion
- empowerment versus repression in health promotion
- health promotion as enemy or ally of individual autonomy
- health promotion and imposing conceptions of ‘the good life’
- health promotion and paternalism
- the role of health promotion with regard to ‘medicalization’ and ‘healthism’
- health promotion and individual responsibility
- the use of marketing strategies in health campaigns
- the applicability of the achievements of biomedical ethics within the context of health promotion
- individual interests versus the common good
- any other topic that deals with the ethical aspects of health promotion
Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be emailed as a Word-document to Hans Donckers at hans.donckers@ugent.be Deadline for submission is March 1, 2007.
I think Dr Siegel that both the comments of Lynda F and Lynda D,encapsulate the points i was attmpting to make on my earlier comment.You have said that by banning smoking in cars containing children,it will increase exposure to those children in the home.This will be taken as a green card by those unethical antis that succeeding in banning smoking in cars MUST be followed with a ban in the home,since that it was you have said.Your words may have read increased risk,they will read it and twist it so that it means increased harm.It is on the cards.Surely you now realise that they read into things what they want.You have never really stated that the risk is MINIMAL and inconsequential in 99.9% of circumstances.I'm sure that if i wished to ,i could promulgate an article clearly showing you to be in favor of these bans by simply taking many of your comments out of context.Many other people on this blog i believe,are saying the same thing.By using an arguement based on privacy to oppose bans in cars and homes,both of which are under siege,and suggesting an increase in exposure, is tantamount a red flag to a bull.Perhaps fully explaining the difference between work place bans and bans in the home,based on risk/exposure may be advantageous.
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around no smoking in the car with a child under the age of 18 and was once again thinking about it. Then a thought came to mind. In most States, a person can drive a car at the age of 16 or 17. Let's say that child, as he/she is under 18, smokes and does so while driving. What will their fine be or how will the law pertain to a minor who is driving and smoking at the same time? In the real world, children under age 18 has friends or relatives over the legal age to purchase cigarettes and those people will purchase them for them. I know I had friends who would have bought them for me at that age.
i suggest we start to regularly use the word EXTREMISTS to descibe the anti-smoker/anti-smoking crusaders. let's label them for what they really are, use the word over and over again. language is very powerful in today's media driven world.
I have a question: Is there a legal age for smoking in the US and particularly Maine ? I know you can't purchase cigarettes if you're under a certain age, but can a teen be intercepted for the act of smoking itself? I know that in Quebec (and probably elsewhere in Canada) police can't and won't do a thing if they see a 12 or 13 year old smoke except perhaps lecture them.
Lynda D - I'm not arguing that secondhand smoke in the workplace causes immediate harm. What I'm saying is that secondhand smoke exposure increases health risks, and that this is a sufficient reason to regulate smoking in the workplace, but not in the home.
" Trampoline Injury Facts
According to the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS), 246,875 medically treated trampoline injuries occur annually in the U.S. Of this total, 186,405 of these injuries occurred among children aged 14 or younger.
http://www.fscip.org/tramp.html "
To get to the really shocking facts, we have to create a ratio of how many injuries in relation to how many trampolines are in use. The risk factor would be millions of times higher than primary smoking and trillions of times higher yet than the risk of ETS
I wonder how the media reports would define the percentage of increased risk to hide the inappropriate nature of a 30% increased risk?
In WI, this past year, the Governor passed legislation increasing fines, levels (up to Misd. levels) and $$ up to the hundreds for under 18 year olds purchasing/possessing cigarettes.
Also, passing the 8 yr old booster seat law-for easier visibility of police is my guess-for this very "smoking in one's car".
Also, pushing for the booster seat law for up to 18, if you are under 4 ft. so many inches and a certain weight. Again, for "visibility" for police into your vehicle.
We have a state Supreme Court Justice who is under the height/weight limit-who will now be required by law to be in a booster seat when SHE is driving her vehicle....
Ahh, the absurdity of all of this. Boggles the logic. Always "the next logical step" of theirs-spiraling down the 7 levels of hell.
OK DR SIEGEL so what is the difference between workplace bans and home, regarding risk ?
In other words we should ban people from enclosed swimming pools, mining of asbestos (still happens in canada), etc.
I realize that just geeting out of bed could be harmful, if the right situations, etc occur. I also realize that water can kill (intoxification) if in great quanties. I also realize that the carcinogens coming off the bacon and eggs your waitrss bring over, is harmful.
Should we now legislate that serving bacon and eggs is outlawed due to the increased risk coming off the food? Afterall having full exposure (waitresses hold plates by face) for many hours, greatly increases risk, and danger too.
What I am trying to say is that there's increased risk, to everything we work at (automotive paint booth). Should we be able to just say any exposure (due to not enough research on total constituents of substance, therefore no safe exposure) is outlawed, and ventilation doesn't work?
Shouldn't we have to justify regulations that inhibit busness just based on risk, not demonstrated harm?
OK, Dr. Siegel, then why total bans at work, why NOT separate rooms for smoking? WHY push all smokers into basements or on the street? We are ONLY talking of POSSIBLE increased risk for some individuals, as many here have shown that the increased risk is NOT guaranteed in ALL individuals.
So, please explain to me the acceptance of these discriminatory bans. Logically...without your personal bias IF possible.
Gabz, but if you whent back to your old NYC neighboorhood today, you would probably find even more of the ear infections, ashtma etc, than in your curent rural are.
This city and asthma kids thing is smoething researchers have noticed only over the last 20 years or so.
One explanation , which is given by researchers is that the switch to radial tires has caused this big asthma jump in cities. Radials use much more latex rubber than the older bias belted tires.
The relationship between latex and alleriges is stunning.
Dave K
Bucknell University has done a lot of this asthma radial tire research
I think I may be able to shed some light on the distinction between justifying invasion into the home regarding parental smoking, vs other kinds of low level behavir which dr siegel says are in the same category.
Saturday morning, the Mayor of Bangor was on NBC and said, first, that he is a smoker and was agianst the proposed car ban. however, when he heard testimony about just how dangerous SHS was to a child, he changed his mind and supported it.
The problem with Dr Siegel comparing parental smoking in cars and homes with giving a kid french fries or not getting enough excersize and watching too much TV, etc. , is that our lawmakers ahve become convinced parental smoking is much worse.
From what I got watching the mayor's inteview, it looks like he thinks a kid exposed to smoke WILL ALWAYS have more ear infections, asthma, infections, and other serious health risks. To me, it looks like the mayor came to believe smoking around a child is the same as beating a child, starving a child, sexually abusing a child, etc. and I suppose he was spaeking for the Bangor City council too.
I'll bet if you whent into the Bangor website and looked at testimony given by those who spoke when the ban was bieng considered, Dr. seigel would be amazed that probably even respected members of the bangor health community do not understand what these studies actualy concluded, and actually mean.
Dave K
si - I don't see a qualitative distinction between the health risks of secondhand smoke in the home versus the workplace. The difference in my opinions regarding the appropriateness of reguating one hazard but not the other is based on the differences between government intrusion in a public place/workplace and a private home.
But a workplace is still someone's private property. It's no different from me telling you if you come to visit, "I smoke here and allow smoking here, if you have a problem with it don't come in". Those are private properties inviting certain people to work there. People that share the same way of working or don't mind that others work in that manner (whatever that manner is). You Doc, have set this in motion. You destroyed the concept of private property. You said "Oh, you let people work there, it's not private anymore, it's time to regulate it". And now the anti's say "Oh, you have kids, it's not private anymore, it's time to regulate it".
Sorry Doc, I hate being a jerk to you, but you started this mess.
I think we have established that SHS does kill some number of babies annually through SIDS and can and does also kill some number of children through severe acute asthma attacks.
So, Dr. Siegel, if one of your patients smokes in the house and her baby dies of SHS induced SIDS, how do you differentiate risk vs. harm for that parent?
Or how about the parent who's child dies from a severe asthma attack, is that just another unlucky day of risk roulette?
Risk is harm distrubuted over a sample of people.
If you know SHS causes SIDS, doeesn't it border on negligence to allow a parent to continue with an unnecessary behavior that could kill their child?
Dr Siegel are you suggesting that there is no difference in the effects of SHS on children compared to adults ? Workplace staff can change,unlike children and parents,as Lynda says,what about designated smoking areas ?In the home a smoker can frequent another area of the house.You have stated that the health effects of SHS are due to the chronic long term exposure.Now i can't see long term exposure in the home equating to the workplace.In the workplace there may not be the avoidance of exposure,if you sit at a desk all day for example.In the home,children are not going to be in the same room on a constant basis,going out to play,bathtime,earlier bedtime etc etc.But since you equate the health risks as being broadly similar,intrusion into the home is being given a green light,you are providing the ammunition and letting someone else pull the trigger.A car is an extension of a person,but already the rights of the person inside have gone to the dogs.Intrusion into the home will happen because you have said there is no difference between workplace and home exposure.It is irrelevant that you say intrusion into the home shouldn't happen due to privacy.It is the american gungho mentality that will prevail,big brother,we know best,you cannot hide behind closed doors.You have argued tooth and nail that exposure to SHS does not lead to immediate health problems for the large majority,you have watched the critical time reduce from 30 minutes to 10 minutes,you say the health effects from shs are from chronic exposure over many years,yet you are pro workplace bans,without suggesting smoking provision ,state shs in the home is not a form of abuse but carries the same risk as in an unregulated workplace.Your dividing line can be measured only by the use of a micrometer.I'm sorry but i think you are trying to justify intrusion into the home should not occur but secretly in terms of goodhealth,it needs to be.You can't have it both ways in todays atmosphere of allowing smokers to be seen as the root of all evil.If Mein Fuhrer Von Mcain has his way and regulates blogs ,similar to big brother in China,then it's going to be pretty interesting to argue anything which goes against the extremist antis and their stooges in your illustrious Government.Frankly i am amazed that Bill has not jumped into this discussion to "discuss" the vagaries of your position.Sorry but i rather think you have (unwittingly ? )led us up the garden path regarding SHS ,since the term chronic can now simply apply AFTER 30 minutes,not the numerous YEARS you seemed to have implied in previous posts.
You've described other "risks" that you feel also cannot and should not be regulated. But there is a difference between these risks and SHS.
First, parents can easily avoid exposing their children to SHS by smoking outside and not in the car. So unlike many of the other things you mentioned, this risk is easily avoidable.
Second, some of the "risk" items you mention ARE considered child abuse and dealt with as such.
For example, its one thing to allow a child to get a mild sunburn. But parents who have allowed their children to get severe sunburns have been prosecuted. http://www.findarticles.com/p/ar...22/
ai_n12639005
A parent who takes their child to McDonalds once for a dose of trans-fat isn't risking the health of their child, but if they did it every day KNOWING their child was morbidly obese, that is abusive.
In addition, your own set of examples shows that laws that intrude into the home for "risk" behaviors already exist. Serving alcohol to children is illegal whether you are in your own home or not.
So I don't think it is really that hard to differentiate normal risks of living (riding heelies, wood stoves) with unnecessary risks that are easily avoided as SHS is.
I originally was opposed to a laws that would ban smoking in the home when children are present. But after reading your post and thinking about it, I am much more convinced now that it may be an appropriate question for lawmakers to raise at some point in the future.
Carl wrote:
"If you know SHS causes SIDS, doeesn't it border on negligence to allow a parent to continue with an unnecessary behavior that could kill their child?"
There's a claim that 90% of skin cancer cases are from exposure to the sun. They also say that early childhood exposure is the greatest danger.
Are you saying, Carl, that all parents are negligent who allow their kids outdoors?
It's a fact that every time a parent puts their kids in the car to go to a movie or a smoke-free restaurant there's a risk of serious injury or death, not to mention vehicular exhaust emission inhalation. Are movies and eating out necessary? Of course not. I'll bet you're not willing to call that bordering on negligence though.
You appear to either be hung up on or grasping at straws with your argument that smoking around kids is an unnecessary risk. There are many "unnecessary" risks we put our kids through. School sports is just one of many.
BTW, from everything I've read, which I'm sure is more than you've ever read, there is less reason today to think of SHS causing SIDS deaths than ever before.
James, taking kids outdoors is essential. Smoking in the house with your kids present is not. Further, there a many ways to protect kids from UV rays - sunscreen, baseball hats they wear when they are on the field, and so on.
You are entitled to your flat earth opinion that SHS doesn't cause SIDS, I just don't agree with you.
Again, the LEADING CENTER FOR SIDS research has CLEARLY stated that they do not know what causes SIDS and they don't want to be associated with claims that smoking causes SIDS.
to Sleep" campaigns in reducing the SIDS death rate (placing the baby on its back rather than on its stomach) and linking smoking and other environmental factors to an increased "risk" for SIDS seem to underplay or leave out entirely the most fundamental point about the status of SIDS research efforts:
Researchers don't know what causes this leading killer of babies between two weeks and one year. Because the underlying causes of SIDS remain unknown, all newborn infants are potentially at risk for SIDS.
Babies placed on their backs to sleep still die of SIDS. Babies not exposed to cigarette smoke still die of SIDS. Babies who are breast fed, who have had wonderful prenatal care, who were full term and of normal birth weight, who have parents who have not abused drugs, in short, who have no known risk factors, still die from SIDS.
As the result of the way these research studies are presented, the public may come to view SIDS as somehow "preventable" if we simply alter the child's environment. Of even greater concern to me is the effect of these reports on families who have lost a child to SIDS, and they still number around 500 a year in California, and between 4,500 and 5,000 nationally.
The last thing we need to do to parents who suffer this tragedy is stigmatize or marginalize them. The simple truth is that SIDS can, and does, claim any baby, in spite of parents doing "everything right."
Barry S. Brokaw
SIDS Alliance Board of Directors
Sacramento, CA
Carl - 12,10,9 a little late to worry about SIDS.
So what's your compelling reason to interfere in my personal life now that my kids beat your odds?
asthma? nope
URI's? nope
OM? nope, not that either
face it - the vast majority of us kids that grew up around SHS are surviving just fine without your interference
oh and my money is on vaccines causing more sids than shs ever will but i don't expect experts to ever admit it
don't know why i come up anon every so often
Carl, I'm not sure where you get the idea it's illegal to serve your child alcohol in your own home. It's perfectly legal to let your child have a small amount of alcohol. Many people allow children wine at dinner. Or on special occasions.
Severe sunburns aren't a "risk", they are severe sunburns, immediately harmful. A hugely obese child is not an increased "risk". That is a child that is having health issues due to their obesity. "Risk" is BEFORE they get sick, not after. A minor sunburn is an increased risk. A meal at McDonald's is an increased risk. Salt in their food is an increased risk. Serving them chicken is an increased risk. Giving them their first peanut is an increased risk. Those all open a door to allow a childto be harmed due to parents behavior and allowances. Having a swimming pool increases the risk ofa child drowning. All these are unnecessary risks. They need none ofthese things tolive. Do you support marking it as child abuse to own any of these things?
Anon, check the laws on driking in Connecticut. It is illegal to serve children alcohol in your home in Connecticut. Looks like maybe the slippery slope you're worried about isn't so slippery after all.
I agree with everything you posted on SIDS. We don't know the cause or why it happens. What is very clear is that it happens MORE often in homes where children are exposed to SHS.
Carl
"What is very clear is that it happens MORE often in homes where children are exposed to SHS."
Could you provide a link that shows this? I would be interested in reading it.
Carl wrote:
"James, taking kids outdoors is essential."
After I just got done telling you that's where almost all skin cancer comes from? What, skin cancer is essential? For what?
"Smoking in the house with your kids present is not."
It is to some.
"Further, there a many ways to protect kids from UV rays - sunscreen, baseball hats they wear when they are on the field, and so on."
Are you daft? One theory for all the skin cancer cases is precisely because of the use of sun block.
And baseball hats? That's not even close to 100% protection.
What's the matter with you? All of a sudden you don't give one crap about kids so don't use them next time you want smoking banned somewhere. You're just a phony.
"You are entitled to your flat earth opinion that SHS doesn't cause SIDS, I just don't agree with you."
Who's the flat earther? You obviously haven't done any reading on the subject. You don't even seem to know the difference between link and causation.
Carl wrote:
"Anon, check the laws on driking in Connecticut. It is illegal to serve children alcohol in your home in Connecticut."
Who gives a damn about CT. In my state (WI) I can give my kids beer or booze at home and it's legal. Legal for them to smoke too.
"Looks like maybe the slippery slope you're worried about isn't so slippery after all."
Nice try at covering up you didn't know what you were talking about.
I can even take my kids to bars in my state, can you do that Carl? I'm pretty sure they can drink in them too. I sat on a jury where an underage drinker's defense was he had been drinking with his dad in a bar and not at the party he was busted at.
You're going to have to hire a publicist, Dr. Siegel. Here's a quote from an Associated Press article by Bassem Mroue in the New Hampshire Sunday News of Jan. 21: "Susan Burgess, the mayor pro tem of Charlotte, N.C. said what's fueling the push [to ban smoking] is a U.S. Surgeon General's report released last June that found just a few minutes inhaling someone else's smoke harms nonsmokers, and separate smoking sections don't offer enough protection."
You should contact this dame and straighten her out, doctor. Pleeease!
James, in my state you can too. And yes, here if you take your child in to a bar, you can give them alcohol, but you MUST be the parent or guardian. Also, if you are married and your spouse is over the legal drinking age and you're not you can drink as well. Buddy of mine was 16..perfectly legal.
Which means in my state, if you are 14 years old and either with a parent or married you are permitted to get as drunk as you like. However, if you do it regularly with a parent it's child abuse...what is it if you do it regularly with a spouse? Hmm...
Oops, sorry to go off topic lol
Correction:
Sorry, the Associated Press article was written by Martin Griffith, not Bassem Mroue.
Another quote from the article: "In Columbia, Mo., one business owner displayed his displeasure at a new local ordinance banning smoking with a sign: 'Smoking allowed until Jan. 9, City Council banning beer next, and hopefully, karaoke!'"
But there's a punch line!
Susan Burgess also is quoted as saying that "when people are given accurate information about the dangers of secondhand smoke, it's almost a no-brainer" they'll support smoking controls. Can't get much more farcical than that.
(Burgess, incidentally, is the founder of the anti-smoking group Smokefree Charlotte. Making Godshall proud.)
The problem today is too many so called political leaders, health scare professional and bandwagon riders simply don't understand the issue and a lot of them are making it up as they go. The problem comes when no one in the medical community defends their own credibility by offering correction and guidance
The bulk of smoking research clearly indicates, smoking in the home will have little or no adverse effects to children. As for Carl's suggestion he is convinced smoking causes SIDS deaths sorry Carl, not one to date. There is a long way between a slight theoretic possibility and assumption of an actual cause.
If we were to take the numbers at face value as the theoretic proof goes the 400,000 Americans who die of smoking related diseases to extend that to “are caused by smoking” is a flagrant lie. For that theory to survive you would have to deny all the confounders eliminated in the calculation of risk had no mortality effect.
What about it Carl are you going to tell us Asbestos and coal shoveled into furnaces in the 60s had no effect?
How about leaded fuels and dioxins harmless?
Over eating and no exercise no effect?
Further the mortality figures we are seeing today are primarily of the elderly who were exposed to all those effects in younger years. Toxins children today only read about in the history books. I personally was exposed to thousands of toxins in my working lifetime. Many I found out later were carcinogenic and by rights through the exposure levels I should be dead, Hell I don't even have a smokers cough yet. SIDS if caused by smoking would presumably show some autopsy evidence and as for asthmatics many when puffers are not available will seek a smoke to alleviate the condition. The amount of people who are affected would in the majority not be affected by a wisp of smoke on the street but more often from a Bingo hall experience, which if the condition was present one knowing they had such a condition would not have a hard time avoiding it. Although for such a person being in a Harvey's restaurant or a supper club with a fireplace the same reaction would also occur.
Parents who have an asthmatic child would not [unless they exhibit sociopath personalities] expose their children to smoke of any kind, let alone riding with the windows up in a car. My wife does not like the smell of the smoke however opening the window a crack while on a trip suits her just fine and believe me; if she was bothered she would be the first one to speak up. Children strangely enough seem to have the same tendency if they are in a Smokey room or car they let you know about it and are just as satisfied by the opening of a window.
Getting back to relative risk; What was, is no more, if smoking has been reduce by more than half so too has the risk been halved.
Mortality today is a reflection of the past and the numbers relative to today can no longer be sustained. The Surgeon general himself stated the exposure to ETS has been reduced by 70% from the time 54% of us smoked, how can smoking be sustained at the risk levels growing by the day, which now indicate ETS to be far more dangerous than smoking despite the fact no one is more exposed than the smokers them selves.
If Doll had any credibility at all he demonstrated; a doctor who smokes his entire life without quitting will loose on average 10 years of his life dying at 75 instead of 85 to some that is a concern, to a lot of us it really isn't If only 50% of smokers die of smoking related disease and no other cause can be possible, we still see smokers smoking from 14 to 30 and having no adverse health effect or lost years. Just how many of these kids are planning to live in their mothers basement past 30?
The risk in the home or the car will not have the same effect as a workplace obviously because your body will purge any tobacco specific toxins over time. A lot faster when you are younger The effects of a sunburn are cumulative and irreversible I have seen no evidence after cessation where any product of smoking has the same permanent effect.
Doc. I am going to put you on the spot here; and ask In your opinion does smoking alone kill 400,000 American's every year based on the calculations alone, and does the same risk exist today if all things remain as they are today, smoking will continue to kill 400,000 Americans every year despite the huge reductions in prevalence.
What do you numbers tell you?
Considering Dolls claims of advantages to smokers if you quit, which contradict current logic.
In your opinion is ETS more dangerous than smoking or has the rumor mill simply gone way beyond what can be credibly sustained.
Let's face it,it has become so fashionable to slate tobacco and smokers,the rabid extremists are falling over themselves to make an ever more vocal impact with their threat of risks associated with it.When no in-depth research is being conducted into these hyperthetical links ,science is being used to rubberstamp legislation.The USA has a long history of puritanical purges and active discrimination,tobacco has merely become one of them.With all of its resources available it still finds allowing these purges to continue is the preferred option.Calls demanding the evidence of SHS are totally ignored and ridiculed by those who have a vested interest in continuing this scam.Dr Siegel,why not start by commenting upon your own research that led to the start of this puritanical fatwah against smokers.Show us how and why you conclude that chronic exposure to SHS causes heart disease etc.There are those amongst us who are highly skilled in interepreting such data you will obviously refer to ( i am certainly not one of them) but let us debate YOUR POSITION ON SHS,OPENLY IN ORDER TO KICKSTART THE BALL ROLLING.
Carl not all smokers are as negligent as you would have us believe.Since we regularly use such dangerous items as matches and lighters,the latter requiring the neccessity of dealing with liquefied butane or good old petrol,not to mention the burning tip of a cigarette,if we were,you would be lucky to have a home that hasn't been burnt down,due to a carelessly discarded butt end,or be able to get into Accident &Emergency due to the numerous children filling it with second degree burns.Talking percentages almost makes the most menial figures suddenly have a new burst of life UNLESS actual numbers are discussed.SHS is still one of the only commodities that attract such perversion when the risk ratio is less HALF OF THE MAGICAL No 3.Epidemiology has been hijacked and perverted,when this occurs,it is WORTHLESS.Would you let your kids swim in the sea ? There are numerous risks,REAL RISKS,associated in doing so.But do you feel the need to intervene ?
Jalestra-
It wasn't me who said that workplaces are in a sense public places and need to be regulated in order to protect employees. It was the social reformers of the early 20th century who were concerned about the terrible working conditions in factories brought on by the industrial revolution. They were really the ones who initiated what is now a system of government regulation of occupational health hazards. I don't think I can take credit for that. All I'm saying is that secondhand smoke should be treated as an occupational health hazard just as any other occupational health hazard. I guess I have a hard time understanding why it should be distinguished from other occupational risks, in a class of its own.
Carl-
I agree that pediatricians have a responsibility to warn the parents of their patients about potential health risks to their children, but I'm not sure how it would be negligent for a physician to "allow" a "parent to continue with an unnecessary behavior that could kill their child?"
It is not under the physician's control. I don't understand how the physician can force a patient to do anything. The best we can do is inform and advise.
Ok Doc - give it your best shot.
I smoke in the presence of 3 children, 12, 10, 9. They are healthy and happy after lifetime exposure. How have I harmed them and why should I stop?
The above comment is interesting;
"Of even greater concern to me is the effect of these reports on families who have lost a child to SIDS, and they still number around 500 a year in California, and between 4,500 and 5,000 nationally.
The last thing we need to do to parents who suffer this tragedy is stigmatize or marginalize them. The simple truth is that SIDS can, and does, claim any baby, in spite of parents doing "everything right."
Barry S. Brokaw
SIDS Alliance Board of Directors
Sacramento, CA
Jalestra | 01.21.07 - 11:43 pm | #"
CA has about 10% of our population, and about 10% of our SIDS cases.
Yet CA has a significantly lower porportion of adult smokers (15%), and fewer CA home owners allow indoor smoking than any other state. http://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/...hs/10/
m10_2.pdf
And CA kids have more asthma: http://www.chis.ucla.edu/
asthma0...thma052002.html
So, if these conditions are related to SHS exposure, then why aren't CA kids healthier?
Dr Siegel says "All I'm saying is that secondhand smoke should be treated as an occupational health hazard just as any other occupational health hazard. I guess I have a hard time understanding why it should be distinguished from other occupational risks, in a class of its own."
Lots of jobs have hazards associated with them which are not done away with. Others have posted this point many times. The National Institute of occupational safety and Health has a huge database on lung cancer risk and occupation. Medical Office workers get more lung cancer than bar and rest workers. We don't ban that occupation because we need medical office workers.
It is also an occupation to serve smokers in bars and rest, those workers support themselves doing that. Dr Siegel does not see the need to serve smokers while smoking as necessary, because he does not acknowlege that bans cause business loss.
Yet Dr Siegel defended me regarding the economic study i wrote with Mcfadden. http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot....claim-
that.html
The study says where our data came from. That source was the US Dept of Commerce. Dr Siegel could check out that source, and see for himself that bans do hurt business.
Dr siegel has even said smoking in cigar bars should be expempt from bans because it is necessary to allow smoking there to have a job.
Therefore it becomes necessary for workers to serve smokers while smoking to protect their income. Just like auto racing, iron working, chemical plant workers accept job related risk which cannot be entirely done away with.
The point is while we do take measures to protect workers, we do not eliminate their jobs to protect them. Bans fit into that same catogry.
A measure to protect workers while serving smoking smokers would to to require good ventilation, and minimize any supposed risk. This fact is recognized in the Chicago ban.
Dr Siegel has no data to show that modern ventilation does not provide sufficient protection to ahve eliminated the problem.
Dr Siegel has not acknowleged my point that bars and rest tend to be located near busy roads where risks of lung cancer and heart disease are higher due to traffic pollution. This could explain all the excess risk Dr Siegel has found in his studies.
In addition cooking has been associated with about a 5-fold increase in lung cancer in China.
Wang, cooking fumes do cause lung cancer in nonsmokers http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cg...bstract/26/1/
24 and
http://152.1.118.33/Files/Mutati...)%20157-
161.pdf
Bar and rest workers are exposed to cooking fumes all day long at work, this could be why they have more LC than Dr. siegel's controls.
It is true bar and rest workers have more Lc and heart disease, than what would be overall expected, what we do not know if it is becasue of SHS, or work location, or stress due to hours worked, or cooking fumes, etc. or even if we have already eliminated enough smoke to fix the suposed problem.
Dave K
You know, I suppose if Bangor had prohibited smoking in a car carrying a child who has a medical history of severe asthma attacks, ear infections, or lower resp tract infections, but allowed smoking in a car carrying a child who had no medical history of conditions blamed to some extent on SHS, i could see that. That;'s just common sense. Dave K
Actually that was regulating things that were KNOWN to CAUSE HARM...not "risks" or unproven harm. The only occupational "hazard" that's been proved by employees is that it's annoying and makes their clothes smell. There's been no definitive science identifying tobacco smoke alone as the cause of problems that are associated with outside factors that cannot be controlled, or refuse to be controlled due to their convenience. We have yet to see a single health problem attributed to tobacco smoke alone. I'm sorry, but comparing the extreme pollutions by factories in the 1900's to cigarette smoke is not going to wash with me.
Now, I propose a reenactment of the Boston tea party, but with cigarettes. I can't seem to get much action out of people on what I perceive are good ideas. If they aren't good ideas, well, I'd at least like you to poke holes in them. However, I think a reenactment of the Boston Tea Party with cigarettes is definitely appropriate.
Jalestra,
I've been proposing another Boston Tea Party since last year myself. Might make these stupid lawmakers finally remember what exactly started the revolution and how this country came into being.
Margaret-Smoker,
I'm with you also. I'd like the good Doc to explain how I managed to raise a healthy 26 year old, with fewer colds, viruses, etc (and he never had bronchitis) than all his little friends and their "healthy non-smoking" parents. My son grew up with 2 smoking parents and we both smoked everywhere in the house AND in the car. Yet, he has survived and not suffered any of these so called problems.
Yes, good Doctor, please explain to me the harm you believe I caused my son, and then go and tell him to his face that his parents abused him. And while you're at it, explain how us baby-boomers managed to survive and be healthy, and are still alive and kicking (though I know you can't for you've already admitted to this part that you can't explain it).
OK, I woke up to a sound bite today (I forgot what station, WABC maybe) from Ray Lesniak regarding the proposed NJ ban on smoking in cars with "the children." I'm paraphrasing from memory so it might not be 100 percent accurate:
We don't allow parents to punch their children in the mouth and break their jaw. We don't allow parents to throw their kids down the stairs and break their arm. Forcing them to breathe second hand smoke not only causes cancer and asthma but also causes spinal problems..
I guess you can thank the official SG propaganda, as well as the Don't Pass Gas campaign (Dr. Siegel, do you now see why I was so alarmed by this campaign?), and all the other relentless hate-mongering, for this type of thinnking. I am at a loss for words but I think we are heading for very dangerous times indeed.
Additionally, I noticed something. Almost every radio report I heard, as well as news article I read, ALL mentioned that this "dovetailed" with the growing movement to protect kids from second hand smoke. I found this most curious as they all used that same word. Are news editors actually writing their own copy, or are they just reproducing press releases put out by you know who?
I also notice that there are NO opposing quotes mentioned.
I do want to stress that the NJ provision would allow for jail time. So, you would essentially be removing the parent out of the child's life for 30 days (or more on the second offense). Who would care for the child?
Don't be surprised if this sails right through.
Margaret and Lynda -
The points you make are exactly why I emphasize that smoking around kids is merely a risk - it does not necessarily cause harm. It is possible for secondhand smoke not to result in asthma, ear infections, or upper respiratory infections among one's children. This is why, unlike ASH and some other anti-smoking groups and advocates (including our own Bill), I do NOT view smoking around children as a form of child abuse. And it is also why I do not believe that bans on smoking in cars and homes with children are justified.
I just wish that my fellow anti-smoking advocates and groups would understand your very simple and accurate point.
How the hell does smoking cause spinal problems? That's a new one on me.
Ok, if smoke isn't harmful enough to protect *children* from...then why is it so harmful to affect supposed adults old enough to choose to enter a place where the actual property owner has permitted smoking. You can't have it both ways. Either its so dangerous to adults that it's insane around children. or it's not all that dangerous to children and well, not all that dangerous to adults either.
That's it? I give you and Carl the perfect opportunity to convince me that I should voluntarily stop smoking around my children and you instead agree with me that I have no compelling reason to do what legislatures around the country are being cajolled into coercing me to do?
I rest my case.
You can't formulate a convincing enough argument to get me to voluntarily comply with "what everybody 'just knows' is bad for children" so now I need to be forced to comply?
I'm beginning to think that what really offends the TC folks is that I haven't been conditioned enough to stop thinking for myself.
"How dare you ask us to back up our decree with nasty little things like facts"? $50 fine to you!
Children in the U.S. have higher average nicotine blood levels (from tobacco smoke pollution) than do nonsmoking adults.
Public policies that protect children from tobaccco smoke pollution in cars are even more important public health measures that public policies that protect workers from tobacco smoke pollution in workplaces.
Similar bills will be introduced in many more states this year, and increasing more of those measures will be enacted.
requiring smokefree cars for kids is a no
Children in the U.S. have higher average nicotine blood levels (from tobacco smoke pollution) than do nonsmoking adults.
All children? Then it must be something they ate, dear Bill, since only about 20% of the total population still smokes and of that 20% I'd wager only half have children, therefore how can ALL children in the US have more nicotine in their blood levels?
Also, what about the children in high smoking rate countries like Japan, France, Greece......what are the nicotine levels of the children in those countries?
Oh, another thing Bill.......WHERE is your proof? Where are the studies showing this so we can read them? Specifically, the studies proving that those nicotine levels are ONLY from SHS inhalation.
Lynda,perhaps Bill is suggesting the kids are smoking ?
The thing i find hard to fully appreciate,is that if it is so imperative to protect kids from SHS,why did they start with workplace policies,and leave the kids until now ?Everything about Tobacco Control in the US sucks bigtime.
Actually the nicotine levels are from NRT products. It's illegal for children to buy *cigarettes*.
Actually the nicotine levels are from NRT products. It's illegal for children to buy *cigarettes*.
Is that you best argument Bill? That US children have higher blood nicotine levels than non-smokers? What exactly are these so-called "High-levels" and what harm do these levels cause my children?
I'm sure I have a hefty level of nicotine in my blood too, and I function very nicely TYVM. I work, I exercise, I play, I pay my taxes.
I heard that despicable "don't pass gas" ad today.
"Each year hundreds of children die that were exposed to SHS".
I'm sure that statement is true. I'm sure it's also true if I state.
"each year thousands of children that never had shs exposure die and only hundreds of those exposed have died".
Should I presume it's safer to expose a child?
Dave K wrote:
"It is true bar and rest workers have more Lc and heart disease, than what would be overall expected, what we do not know if it is becasue of SHS, or work location, or stress due to hours worked, or cooking fumes, etc. or even if we have already eliminated enough smoke to fix the suposed problem."
Another possible reason for increased heart disease amongst restaurant workers: They eat the restaurant food on their lunch/dinner breaks.
Those over-sized trans fat laden, high calorie foods we're all told is killing us, they may be eating it every working day.
Imagine eating a "Heart attack on a plate" meal every working day. That's what we did when I worked in a restaurant in high school.
It's not cooking fumes or SHS, it's the food! LOL
Bill wrote:
"Public policies that protect children from tobaccco smoke pollution in cars are even more important public health measures that public policies that protect workers from tobacco smoke pollution in workplaces."
Can you back that up with some studies? I'm quite sure most of the studies I've seen show no increased risk for kids. That's why anti-tobacco only screams about ear infections, upper resp. problems, and aggravating existing asthma conditions.
Workplace bans entail heart disease and lung cancer. Are you really trying to suggest an ear ache trumps lung cancer, Bill?
James inquired:
"Can you back that up with some studies?"
Numerous studies and reports (including the EPA report and several SG reports) concur that children face greater health risks from exposure to tobacco smoke pollution than are adults, and concur that levels of smoke are greater cars than in workplaces.
Cigarette companies haven't even challenged that research or recommendations that children shouldn't be exposed to tobacco smoke pollution.
Did you not say earlier Dr Siegel that there is a parity between exposure to children and adults ? So where is the greater harm shown ? Please note Bill the use of the question mark as i appreciate you completely failed to understand its significance when it suited you.Why should cigarette companies argue anything,you just ignore everything when it suits you.
concur that levels of smoke are greater cars than in workplaces - Bill
In which cars, compared to which workplaces? Are you talking about an average level? How is it determined? .
And what about other health hazards, such as benzene? Any studies that compare benzene levels in cars and workplaces?
Hope this isn't a double post
Bill wrote:
"Numerous studies and reports (including the EPA report and several SG reports) concur that children face greater health risks from exposure to tobacco smoke pollution than are adults, and concur that levels of smoke are greater cars than in workplaces."
And I said the same thing about studies so we're even. I'll add:
"The evidence for increased cancer risks in later life among children exposed to parental and other passive exposures is uncertain at this time."
That's what the IARC said after reviewing THOUSANDS of studies and papers on smoking and SHS.
That trumps your EPA and SG reports by a mile.
BTW, when it comes to cars, Bill, do you honestly think kids are more exposed there than in (8 hour a day) workplaces?
I don't know about you, but when my kids were small I avoided at all costs taking them somewhere when I didn't need to. Getting them dressed and put in car seats was just too big a pain in the ass. And rarely did car rides amount to more than a few minutes long when we did go somewhere.
And please don't cite the study where they let 5 cigarettes smolder in an ashtray in a stationary vehicle. Cigarettes aren't smoked that way and people get in cars to go somewhere, not just sit there.
As I believe I've stated before, a small baby with the lungs of an 8 year old needs 5 hours to inhale all the air in a Honda Civic.
Bill Godshall "Send you a plague of frogs" writes:
Numerous studies and reports (including the EPA report and several SG reports) concur that children face greater health risks from exposure to tobacco smoke pollution than are adults, and concur that levels of smoke are greater cars than in workplaces.
_________________________________
I don't smoke in the car or in my house with my children. Ask me why Bill. I dare you.
Throwing out the unquantified and undefined scary sound bite, Bill says:
Children in the U.S. have higher average nicotine blood levels (from tobacco smoke pollution) than do nonsmoking adults.
To which the CDC responds:
"The presence of a chemical in blood or urine does not necessarily indicate that the chemical will cause disease. Additional research is required to determine whether the levels reported are a cause for health concern."
And ACSH responds:
"The presence in the body of a trace chemical generally signifies occupational or lifestyle-related exposure to that substance. Such a presence alone should not be overinterpreted as necessarily injurious to health, however. For the vast majority of exogenous chemicals (chemicals originating outside the body), there is no evidence to suggest that trace concentrations in the body present a risk to human health."
Peddling your script of deception will get you nowhere here, Bill.
Dr Siegel wrote:
.... secondhand smoke should be treated as an occupational health hazard just as any other occupational health hazard. I guess I have a hard time understanding why it should be distinguished from other occupational risks, in a class of its own.
How about because OSHA doesn't think it's an occupational risk, and couldn't be forced to think so even under the pain of a Banzaf lawsuit? How about because the amounts of chemicals repeatedly measured in the air of a smoky room not only never exceed but are far far below what OSHA considers safe for 8 hour exposure?
How about the Oak Ridge (among other) studies that again proved the point? How about the several painstaking analyses that have proven that, to reach the minimal OSHA standards of possibly risky air, anywhere from 1000 to a million cigarettes * would have be smoked -- all at the same time,--in a hermetically sealed room of 20 x 20 feet?
* That range is arrived at by dealing with each of the known constituents of secondhand smoke on a one by one basis and comparing them to the PELS (the Permissible Exposure Levels) as defined by OSHA. The studies I'm referring to were done by Gori, Mantel, and Fennell and...oops, it seems I forget who.
Finally, doc, since you've admitted here again that secondhand smoke in the home is just a (statistical or theoretical?) "risk" and that probably many if not most children are unaffected, how can you keep repeating that the danger of outdoor bans is that smokers will smoke inside and thus grossly endanger their kids?
And what about parents who do smoke in their homes but not in the room with their children who'll be banned from smoking at all when these laws come into effect, as surely they're going to come. My cousin, for example, only smokes in his attic den. Does the smoke drift downward and contaminate the house?
I came across this citation:
Exposure to nicotine is probably a major cause of inflammatory diseases among non-smokers.
GRACIA M. C. ;
This article assesses the hypothesis that most inflammatory diseases are conditioned responses caused by the psychoactive action of nicotine. Even in very ’light’ passive smokers, the repeated nicotinic stimulation of thereward system can produce, through classical and subsequent operant conditioning, unconscious addiction to most relevant perceptions occurring simultaneously, including the artificial, non-localised sensation of pain or sickness caused by the action of nicotine on the nociceptive ’cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway’. During nicotine abstinence and especially under stress, the brain previously addicted to this pain is compelled to reproduce it by the only method available without nicotine: causing lesions or cellular stress in one’s organism, for example, by triggering intense inflammations. The author’s observations and two independent studies have confirmed that nicotine withdrawal causes inflammatory crises. Furthermore, there is evidence that severe inflammations can be triggered even by almost unnoticeable exposures to nicotine, for example, by staying several minutes outdoors at a few metres from smokers. This has been clearly observed by one patient and can be deduced from theoretical considerations (sensitivity of neural pathways and cumulativeness of conditioning processes) and an animal experimental reference, and is confirmed by the fact that most inflammatory diseases affect similarly all non-smokers regardless of their apparent exposure to nicotine, despite the proven relation between nicotine withdrawal and inflammation. This sensitivity implies that the outdoors atmosphere of most densely populated urban areas represents now a serious health hazard, probably requiring the prohibition of all smokable forms of nicotine. The usual anti-smoking measures focused on closed spaces are inefficient against this danger.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entr...6&
dopt=Abstract
And from the same author:
Inflammatory, autoimmune, chronic diseases: bad diet and physical inactivity are causes or effects?
where he states:
Current opinion favours the first option, but fails to explain why the satisfaction of eating, naturally evolved in our brains to produce health, apparently induces countless millions of people to eat unrestrictedly until becoming mortally sick, whereas trying to keep a theoretically healthy diet is most often a real torture. .... Only the identification and elimination of the inflammatory agents can efficiently prevent and cure inflammatory diseases, and currently nicotine, absorbed intentionally or passively, from tobacco or other sources, must be considered the chief suspect because of its inflammatory power, ubiquity and addictive properties.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
entr...l=pubmed_docsum
Benpal
of all the studies in the 'junk science' mountain, this one deserves a special place at the summit. I've never read such a load of blatent drivel in my life!
Here we have an author (I won't dignify him with the title 'scientist') whose obvious devotion to the religion of anti-tobacco is so profound that he has worked backwards from his conclusion "probably requiring the prohibition of all smokable forms of nicotine" to try and come up with something vaguely plausible.
Well, if the best he can do is "This has been clearly observed by one patient and can be deduced from theoretical considerations (sensitivity of neural pathways and cumulativeness of conditioning processes) and an animal experimental reference" then he is clearly a charlatan, a criminal and a clown - and for his crimes he should be locked up in a darkened room with Bill Godshall for the rest of his life.
In the final analysis, what he is actually saying is anti-smoking creates more hypochondriacs - and that when they see even the tiniest plume of cigarette smoke they break out in a mass of boils.
Well tough! Serves them right for being such wimps.
"[A]nd currently nicotine, absorbed intentionally or passively, from tobacco or other sources, must be considered the chief suspect because of its inflammatory power, ubiquity and addictive properties."
Other members on chief suspects list:
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Etc.
James,
not to mention NRT patches, gum, inhalers, pastels etc.
Or are these included as "from tobacco"
GreatScot
There is not an ultimate advice because everyone interprets odors in their own way, and the same fragrance can smell totally different considering type of skin, hair color, temperament and even the season of a year. There are important nuances if you do not want to seem vulgar or lacking of taste.
Hi, guys.
That 'study' Benpal posted is pretty funny, especially considering that one of the many beneficial effects of smoking includes an anti-inflammatory effect.
The neuroprotective aspects of tobacco are nothing to sneeze at either - and what this helps in protecting from may explain a lot.
But less disease in smokers always works out to claims of 2nd smoke being deadlier.
At least ever since Big Pharma began advertising the prospective benefits of experimental GM medications/single chemicals they derived from tobacco and want purchased from them.
Antis tend to claim the opposite effects of tobacco occur than actually do, in transferring to tobacco and other human choice the recently published/publicized effects of products/pollution indicating liability for other, powerful industries - and accuse others of concealing corporate ties and interests.
In the rush to ascribe all evil to human choice, claims are even made of maternal smoking/ETS exposure - something with which we've always been fine - supposedly causing the snowballing rates of cognitive/behavioural disorders appearing among children over the past few decades, rather than when the population smoking rates were high.
The article from which the following quotes are taken is fascinating, collating many of the known facts about lead - one of the multiple industry-produced neurotoxic poisons in our environment and bodies - into a coherent whole.
For those who rarely follow links, some of the essential points are copied below.
Many older books mention incidents where regular smokers run out of cigarettes - but fail to demonstrate the 'nic fit' response so common today.
I have a theory that this response occurs because the protective aspects of smoking wear off - and we live in a toxic soup worsening daily.
The unpleasant behaviour of so many 'born-again non-smokers' could be explained by this postulate.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/V...VISIE/
lead.html
'Lead and the brain'
'For centuries, lead contamination has undermined intelligence and debased behavior. Only now are we beginning to fully understand how this heavy metal damages the brain, especially the prefrontal cortex, that fragile headquarters of our humanity.' ...
' In 1998 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) reported that nearly a million American children between the ages of one and five have the toxic metal lead in their blood at concentrations above 10 micrograms per deciliter (ug/dL), the current threshold of safety established in 1991. [1] This was chosen as the "unsafe" level mainly because it was the lowest level that could be detected with an inexpensive test. According to the CDCP, setting the standard lower would burden the country's healthcare system. [2]
'Actually, there is no safe dose of lead in children's blood. After summarizing the research, in 1993 the National Research Council concluded "there is growing evidence that there is no effective threshold for some of the adverse effects of lead.
'. . . Even very small exposures to lead can produce subtle effects in humans." [3]
'Lead Affects Children the Most
'Lead in the body can cause permanent damage to the central nervous system, the brain, and kidneys. This commonly results in behavior and learning problems, hearing problems, headaches, high blood pressure, slowed growth, reproductive problems, digestive problems, muscle and joint pain. The effects of lead poisoning are cumulative and can last a lifetime. They are usually irreversible — especially in sensitive populations such as fetuses, children, and pregnant women.
'Lead is most devastating to unborn children, because the "placental barrier" does not protect the developing fetus from lead in maternal blood. This placental transfer of lead begins as early as the 12th week of gestation and continues throughout fetal development. [4]
'The risk of spontaneous abortion nearly doubles for every 5 ug/dL increase in blood lead levels, according to the results of a two-year Mexican study reported in the Sept. 15, 1999 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.
'Lead Lowers Intelligence
'In 1995, the American Academy of Pediatrics reviewed 18 scientific studies on the correlation between children's mental abilities and lead in their blood. "The relationship between lead levels and IQ deficits was found to be remarkably consistent," the Academy said. "A number of studies have found that for every 10 ug/dL increase in blood lead levels, there was a lowering of mean IQ in children by 4 to 7 points." [5]
'This drop has staggering implications. As Theo Coburn describes in her landmark 1994 book, Our Stolen Future:
' "With the current average IQ score of 100, a population of 100 million will have 2.3 million intellectually gifted people who score above 130. Though it might not sound like much, if the average were to drop just five points to 95 . . . only 990,000 would score above 130, so this society would have lost more than half its high-powered minds with the capacity to become the most gifted doctors, scientists, college professors, inventors, or writers.
' "At the same time, this downward shift would result in a greater number of slow learners, with IQ scores around 70, who would require special remedial education, an already costly educational burden, and who may not be able to fill many of the more highly skilled jobs in a technological society. Given the daunting array of problems we face as nations and as a world community, the last thing we can afford is the loss of human intelligence and problem-solving powers."
'Attention-Deficits
'A 1996 study at the University of Massachusetts evaluated the relationship between lead levels in the hair of children and their attention-deficit behaviors in the classroom. It found a "striking dose-response relationship between levels of lead and negative teacher ratings. . . An even stronger relationship existed between physician-diagnosed attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and hair lead in the same children." [6] A similar study done at Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam found that children with relatively high concentrations of lead in their hair "were significantly less flexible in changing their focus of attention." [7]
'Experiments at the University of Rochester School of Medicine found that animals exposed to lead exhibited behaviors similar those observed in children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — "impulsivity" and "inability to inhibit inappropriate responding." [8]'
'How Lead Violates the Brain
'In their 1998 investigation into lead's effects on the brains of children, Israeli researchers found that, for starters, lead disrupts the main structural components of the blood-brain barrier, (by injuring the glial brain cells that surround and protect neurons and by damaging the capillaries that keep toxins out of the brain).
'Once in the brain, lead-induced damage occurs primarily in the prefrontal cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and hippocampus. There it adversely affects many biological activities at the molecular, cellular, and intracellular levels.
'Writing in the July 1998 issue of Brain Research, neurologists at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem reported that lead interferes with the action of calcium and with the neurotransmitter systems that are crucial to regulating emotional response, memory, and learning.
'They found a direct link between low-level long-term exposure to lead and deficits in cognitive performance and behavior in childhood through adolescence. They also concluded that "there is no threshold below which lead remains without effect on the central nervous system."
Since learning requires the remodeling of the brain's synapses — the spaces between neurons where information is exchanged — lead may specifically affect synaptic transmission. In 1999, neurologists at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health proposed that the learning deficits caused by lead are due to its disruption of processes regulated by calcium (protein kinase C) at the synapse.
(TBC)
'Lead and Dementia
'Animal studies done in the 1980s showed that lead inhibits myelination and microtubule assembly in the brain, as well as caused the formation of fibers and "aggregates of amorphous material." [11] This suggests that lead may be involved in senile dementia, although little research has been done in this area.' (My comment - this effect is, naturally, transferred in PR to cotinine or nicotine levels, even though - and likely because - the neuroprotective aspects of smoking help to protect against such problems - unless, of course, the tobacco plant smoked has been GM altered to remove beneficial, interactive chemicals/to pick up heavy metals and other toxins/altered or infected with one of the created GM viruses affecting natural plants and causing the production of rubber, drugs or other chemicals, sometimes after harvest - some of the many genetic alterations and viral releases already conducted on tobacco plants - some in field tests in the very heart of Virginia.
And if not specifically tested for, such additions/alterations will not be evident - re stinky, toxic, globally-enforced-by-law-in-all-countries-over-
objections-just-like-smoking-bans RIP cigarettes promoted by anti groups with an awful lot of power and the backing of the Bush Administration, the World Bank, etc. But that's another theory for another day. Ahem.)
'The November 1998 issue of the journal Epidemiology published a report titled, "Is chronic low-level lead exposure in early life an etiologic factor in Alzheimer's disease?" According to Dr. Prince at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Institute of Psychiatry, England: "Few environmental risk factors for Alzheimer's disease have been identified. This lack of information may reflect the fact that salient factors affect most of the population in developed countries. Furthermore, the critical period of exposure may be earlier than hitherto suspected, during the first years of life, as the brain differentiates and develops. Exposure to lead at levels lower than those associated with evident toxicity causes mild intellectual impairment in childhood. I hypothesize that this may be one of the childhood exposures that also confers an additional risk for the onset of Alzheimer's disease." '
(My comment - HIGHLY PERTINENT INFO FOLLOWS.)
'The Prefrontal Cortex and Your Moral Imperative
'Your prefrontal cortex is the most human part of your brain. One of the things it allows you do is to see things from a different point of view, to walk in someone else's shoes — in a word, empathy. Since the 1980s, scientists have correlated damage to the prefrontal cortex with psychopathic behavior and the inability to make morally and socially acceptable decisions.
'Swedish researchers have found that the prefrontal cortex is precisely the area of the brain that is is impaired in murderers, rapists, and other violent criminals who repeatedly re-offend. At the November 1999 annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Asa Bergvall and her colleagues from the University in Sweden presented findings on their study of violent offenders.
'The results were quite startling."The violent offenders are like the controls in every task but one, which taps prefrontal function," says Bergvall. "In that, it was as if they were retarded." They had an impaired ability to shift their attention in order to view the world in a different way — a function linked to the lateral prefrontal cortex. Other, higher order executive functions of their prefrontal cortex appeared to be unimpaired.
'Childhood Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex is the Worst
'In a related presentation at the Society for Neuroscience meeting, researchers reported that children who experience early prefrontal damage never completely develop social or moral reasoning. Even on an intellectual level they cannot refer to such behavior because they have little concept of it.
'In contrast, individuals with adult-acquired damage are usually aware of what proper social and moral behavior should be. However, they are unable to act upon it. Even though they have an intellectual memory of learned moral conduct, they cannot apply such behaviors.
'A study at University of Iowa College of Medicine, published in the November 1999 Nature Neuroscience, reports on two cases of early brain damage to the prefrontal cortex, in which the patients as adults showed the same two distinctive features: an almost total lack of guilt and an inability to plan for the future — but were normal in almost every other type of mental ability.
'The patients had problems with violence and "resemble psychopathic individuals, who are characterized by high levels of aggression and antisocial behavior performed without guilt or empathy for their victims," wrote Raymond Dolan of Institute of Neurology in London in an editorial that accompanied the research.
'Their brains were just not capable of acquiring social and moral knowledge even at a normal level.
'Unlike other areas of the brain, the prefrontal cortex is not particularly plastic. If the area responsible for moral and social awareness is damaged in childhood, it can never develop. Dolan suggested that this understanding of the brain will require a reappraisal of the way society deals with criminal behavior, because "problems with moral and social behavior may be rooted in physical problems in the brain."
'As New York physician Dr. Charles Gant describes it: In evolutionary terms the prefrontal cortex is "the last part of the human brain to develop and is one of the first parts to lose its function when there is a generalized stress or injury to the central nervous system. Because this recent brain structure has not had the benefit of millions of extra years of 'road testing,' that the older, more rugged parts of the brain have had, it is more vulnerable to modern-era stress, neurotoxins, and nutritional deficiencies." [12]'
(My comment - one can see how the loss of protection especially for brain and nervous system function generally balanced and protected by tobacco smoking would elicit feelings of irritation and discomfort on a deep level - the symptoms of a 'nic fit'.)
'Our Old Enemy, Lead, has a New Ally
'Important ongoing research has revealed a widespread, serious risk co-factor for lead poisoning. ...'
'Today's acid rain is not the only factor increasing lead contamination. Researchers at Dartmouth University found that certain chemicals being added to our drinking water are magnifying the uptake of lead and other toxic metals into the body and brain. Analyzing a major survey of more than 280,000 Massachusetts children, the team headed by Prof. Roger D. Masters has identified corrosive chemicals widely used in the fluoridation of public water supplies that apparently increase children's absorption of lead.
'Fluoridation Increases Lead Uptake
'The culprits are silicofluorides — fluosilicic acid and sodium silicofluoride — the chemicals used in more than 90% of America's fluoridated drinking water systems.
'In their study published in the October 1999 International Journal of Environmental Studies, the Dartmouth researchers show that children's blood lead is significantly higher in Massachusetts communities using silicofluorides than in towns where water is treated with sodium fluoride or not fluoridated at all.
'Compared to a matched group of 30 towns that do not use silicofluorides, children in 30 communities that use these chemicals were over twice as likely to have more than 10 ug/dL of lead in their blood.
' "Silicofluorides are largely untested," Professor Masters explains. "Virtually all research on fluoridation safety has focused on sodium fluoride, even though the studies in the 1930s showed important biological differences between these chemicals." ...
'During a 1992 drought in Tacoma, Washington, they temporarily stopped fluoridating their water and lead levels dropped from 32 ppb (parts per billion) to 17 ppb. When Thurmont, Maryland stopped fluoridating their drinking water in 1994, the lead level in homes dropped from 30 ppb to 7 ppb. (The EPA's Maximum Contaminant Level is 15 ppb.) [13]
'More than 98% of U.S. homes have lead in their plumbing systems. It comes from lead pipes, or copper pipes connected by lead solder, and from brass faucets, which also contain lead. Most chrome plated faucets are made of brass which is permitted to contain as much as 8% lead.
'Poisoning the Well — Lead, Drugs, and Violence
'According to Prof. Masters, who heads the Dartmouth Foundation for Neuroscience and Society, "Through one of several plausible mechanisms, SiF [silicofluoride] treated water can increase the transport of heavy metals across the gut-blood and blood-brain barriers, increasing rates of toxic uptake and behavioral disfunction."
'On Sept. 2, 1999 at the Annual Conference of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences, Prof. Masters gave the Plenary Address: "Poisoning the Well: Neurotoxic Metals, Water Treatment, and Human Behavior." He said the problem is especially serious because lead poisoning is associated with higher rates of learning disabilities, hyperactivity, substance abuse, and crime. Children who have been poisoned by lead are less able to handle stress and are more prone to violent outbursts.
(TBC)
(Con't)
'Silicofluorides and Violence
'Heavy metals damage neurons and "compromise normal brain development and neurotransmitter function, leading to long-term deficits in learning and social behavior," says Masters. Lead blocks the action of calcium atoms in the synthesis of serotonin and dopamine, neurotransmitters essential to normal impulse control and the suppression of violent behavior.'
(My comment - many of the injuries caused by Big Pharma's psychiatric and 'off label' drugs [with, specifically, calcium blockers listed as big sellers] have been related to their long-term tendency to produce drugs that block essential brain chemicals, especially serotonin and dopamine - referred to as a 'morphine-like' substance in the media PR.
Smoking, of course, balances the brain and nervous system and, naturally, dopamine processes, on an immediate, if temporary, basis.
Notice also that a recent publicized intent is to damage/inhibit brain function to control 'tobacco addicts' in destroying/impeding the portion of the brain which informs of the way the person is physically feeling.
We live in our brains - what greater crime can there be than that signified by a group determined to control pacific and law-abiding citizens for their own purposes by destroying/impeding a portion of the brain - the human within - while leaving them living as a source of additional revenue?
Is this the concept of sanity?)
'Where silicofluorides were used to fluoridate water, risk-ratios for blood lead over 10 ug/dL are from 1.25 to 2.5 — more than doubled. Silicofluorides are thus ultimately responsible for more aggressive behavior among people who consume fluoridated water — including the soft drinks, juices, and foods made with fluoridated water — and whose diets are lacking in calcium.
'After an analysis of 129 rural communities in Georgia, Masters also found that "communities using silicofluorides also report higher rates of learning disabilities, ADHD, violent crime, and criminals who were using cocaine at the time of arrest."
'This makes sense because lead depresses dopamine levels in the brain, and cocaine addiction is associated with low levels of dopamine.'
(My comment - and we're back to protective nicotine and the balancing of essential brain chemicals and of the nervous system in a toxic world, this without perception-altering effects.)
'Evidence still exists of the Romans' huge lead mining operations two millennia ago in southwestern Spain. Researchers have detected lead concentrations in core samples taken from Greenland's ice, evidence of large-scale pollution of Earth's atmosphere that peaked between 150 B.C. and 50 A.D., the height of Roman mining activity. "Lead pollution levels during the Roman era were about four times greater than natural background levels of lead but were still low by modern standards. Between the 1930s and 1970s, the lead concentration in the ice was 25 to 50-times higher than during Roman times, due in large part to leaded gasoline."
'Dr. Herbert L. Needleman, a leading researcher on the effects of low-level lead exposure, notes that the "increase in psychiatric disturbance in upper class Romans may have been related to lead exposure from plumbing and wine additives and thus was in part responsible for the decline of Rome." [15]'...
(IMPORTANT INFO FOLLOWS!!!)
'Sources of Lead Exposure this Century
'In "The Story of Lead," Peter Montague reports: "The period of greatest lead use was 1945-1971, after which it began to decline. In those years, 165,000 to 275,000 tons of lead dust spewed from the exhaust pipes of American automobiles each year. Americans born during these years have 300 to 1000 times as much lead in their bodies as pre-Columbian indigenous people had. Thus the generation of decision-makers in power today — in government and in corporations — is made up of people who are suffering mental irritability and dysfunction as a result of severe chronic lead insult. Reviewing the history of the past 25 years, it seems clear that the nation and the world have already paid a terrible price for their irritability and dysfunction. Leadership by the most lead-damaged (those born around 1970) lies just ahead." [16]'
(My interjection - the psychopathic personality is drawn to positions where power over others can be assumed, much as are moths to a flame, and with much the same level of understanding as to how the results of their own actions may ultimately harm or destroy themselves as well as 'the lower orders'.
Robert Hare, from a Fast Company article following: '...Easily bored, they crave constant stimulation, so they seek thrills from real-life "games" they can win -- and take pleasure from their power over other people.'...
'They don't care that you have thoughts and feelings. They have no sense of guilt or remorse." ...'
'...You'll find them in any organization where, by the nature of one's position, you have power and control over other people and the opportunity to get something." '
http://www.crisiscounseling.com/.../
Psychopath.htm
'A psychopath is usually a subtle manipulator. They do this by playing to the emotions of others. They typically have high verbal intelligence, but they lack what is commonly referred to as "emotional intelligence". There is always a shallow quality to the emotional aspect of their stories. In particular they have difficulty describing how they felt, why they felt that way, or how others may feel and why. In many cases you almost have to explain it to them. Close friends and parents will often end up explaining to the psychopath how they feel and how others feel who have been hurt by him or her. They can do this over and over with no significant change in the person's choices and behavior. They don't understand or appreciate the impact that their behavior has on others. They do appreciate what it means when they are caught breaking rules or the law even though they seem to end up in trouble again. They desperately avoid incarceration and loss of freedom but continue to act as if they can get away with breaking the rules. They don't learn from these consequences. They seem to react with feelings and regret when they are caught. But their regret is not so much for other people as it is for the consequences that their behavior has had on them, their freedom, their resources and their so called "friends." They can be very sad for their self. A psychopath is always in it for their self even when it seems like they are caring for and helping others. The definition of their "friends" are people who support the psychopath and protect them from the consequence of their own antisocial behavior. Shallow friendships, low emotional intelligence, using people, antisocial attitudes and failure to learn from the repeated consequences of their choices and actions help identify the psychopath.'
http://www.fastcompany.com/magaz..._boss-
quiz.html
http://www-psychology.concordia..../
psychopath.ppt
http://www.hrbackoffice.com/
Pres...esentations.htm
http://www.fastcompany.com/magaz.../
open_boss.html
'One of the most provocative ideas about business in this decade so far surfaced in a most unlikely place. The forum wasn't the Harvard Business School or one of those $4,000-a-head conferences where Silicon Valley's venture capitalists search for the next big thing. It was a convention of Canadian cops in the far-flung province of Newfoundland. The speaker, a 71-year-old professor emeritus from the University of British Columbia, remains virtually unknown in the business realm. But he's renowned in his own field: criminal psychology. Robert Hare is the creator of the Psychopathy Checklist. The 20-item personality evaluation has exerted enormous influence in its quarter-century history. It's the standard tool for making clinical diagnoses of psychopaths -- the 1% of the general population that isn't burdened by conscience. Psychopaths have a profound lack of empathy. They use other people callously and remorselessly for their own ends. They seduce victims with a hypnotic charm that masks their true nature as pathological liars, master con artists, and heartless manipulators. Easily bored, they crave constant stimulation, so they seek thrills from real-life "games" they can win -- and take pleasure from their power over other people.'...
'They don't care that you have thoughts and feelings. They have no sense of guilt or remorse." He talked about the pain and suffering the corporate rogues had inflicted on thousands of people who had lost their jobs, or their life's savings. Some of those victims would succumb to heart attacks or commit suicide, he said.
'Then Hare came out with a startling proposal. He said that the recent corporate scandals could have been prevented if CEOs were screened for psychopathic behavior. "Why wouldn't we want to screen them?" he asked. "We screen police officers, teachers. Why not people who are going to handle billions of dollars?"
'It's Hare's latest contribution to the public awareness of "corporate psychopathy." He appeared in the 2003 documentary The Corporation, giving authority to the film's premise that corporations are "sociopathic" (a synonym for "psychopathic") because they ruthlessly seek their own selfish interests -- "shareholder value" -- without regard for the harms they cause to others, such as environmental damage.
(Con't)
Is Hare right? Are corporations fundamentally psychopathic organizations that attract similarly disposed people? It's a compelling idea, especially given the recent evidence. Such scandals as Enron and WorldCom aren't just aberrations; they represent what can happen when some basic currents in our business culture turn malignant. We're worshipful of top executives who seem charismatic, visionary, and tough. So long as they're lifting profits and stock prices, we're willing to overlook that they can also be callous, conning, manipulative, deceitful, verbally and psychologically abusive, remorseless, exploitative, self-delusional, irresponsible, and megalomaniacal. So we collude in the elevation of leaders who are sadly insensitive to hurting others and society at large.'...
'On the broad continuum between the ethical everyman and the predatory killer, there's plenty of room for people who are ruthless but not violent. This is where you're likely to find such people as Ebbers, Fastow, ImClone CEO Sam Waksal, and hotelier Leona Helmsley. We put several big-name CEOs through the checklist, and they scored as "moderately psychopathic"; our quiz on page 48 lets you try a similar exercise with your favorite boss. And this summer, together with New York industrial psychologist Paul Babiak, Hare begins marketing the B-Scan, a personality test that companies can use to spot job candidates who may have an MBA but lack a conscience. "I always said that if I wasn't studying psychopaths in prison, I'd do it at the stock exchange," Hare told Fast Company. "There are certainly more people in the business world who would score high in the psychopathic dimension than in the general population. You'll find them in any organization where, by the nature of one's position, you have power and control over other people and the opportunity to get something."
'There's evidence that the business climate has become even more hospitable to psychopaths in recent years. In pioneering long-term studies of psychopaths in the workplace, Babiak focused on a half-dozen unnamed companies: One was a fast-growing high-tech firm, and the others were large multinationals undergoing dramatic organizational changes -- severe downsizing, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, and joint ventures. That's just the sort of corporate tumult that has increasingly characterized the U.S. business landscape in the last couple of decades. And just as wars can produce exciting opportunities for murderous psychopaths to shine (think of Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic), Babiak found that these organizational shake-ups created a welcoming environment for the corporate killer. "The psychopath has no difficulty dealing with the consequences of rapid change; in fact, he or she thrives on it," Babiak claims. "Organizational chaos provides both the necessary stimulation for psychopathic thrill seeking and sufficient cover for psychopathic manipulation and abusive behavior."
'And you can make a compelling case that the New Economy, with its rule-breaking and roller-coaster results, is just dandy for folks with psychopathic traits too. A slow-moving old-economy corporation would be too boring for a psychopath, who needs constant stimulation. Its rigid structures and processes and predictable ways might stymie his unethical scheming. 'But a charge-ahead New Economy maverick -- an Enron, for instance -- would seem the ideal place for this kind of operator.
'But how can we recognize psychopathic types? Hare has revised his Psychopathy Checklist (known as the PCL-R, or simply "the Hare") to make it easier to identify so-called subcriminal or corporate psychopaths. He has broken down the 20 personality characteristics into two subsets, or "factors." Corporate psychopaths score high on Factor 1, the "selfish, callous, and remorseless use of others" category. It includes eight traits: glibness and superficial charm; grandiose sense of self-worth; pathological lying; conning and manipulativeness; lack of remorse or guilt; shallow affect (i.e., a coldness covered up by dramatic emotional displays that are actually playacting); callousness and lack of empathy; and the failure to accept responsibility for one's own actions. Sound like anyone you know? (Corporate psychopaths score only low to moderate on Factor 2, which pinpoints "chronically unstable, antisocial, and socially deviant lifestyle," the hallmarks of people who wind up in jail for rougher crimes than creative accounting.)
'This view is supported by research by psychologists Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon at the University of Surrey, who interviewed and gave personality tests to 39 high-level British executives and compared their profiles with those of criminals and psychiatric patients. The executives were even more likely to be superficially charming, egocentric, insincere, and manipulative, and just as likely to be grandiose, exploitative, and lacking in empathy. Board and Fritzon concluded that the businesspeople they studied might be called "successful psychopaths." In contrast, the criminals -- the "unsuccessful psychopaths" -- were more impulsive and physically aggressive.'...
'Most criminals -- whether psychopathic or not -- are shaped by poverty and often childhood abuse as well. In contrast, corporate psychopaths typically grew up in stable, loving families that were middle class or affluent. But because they're pathological liars, they tell romanticized tales of rising from tough, impoverished backgrounds. Dunlap pretended that he grew up as the son of a laid-off dockworker; in truth, his father worked steadily and raised his family in suburban comfort. The corporate psychopaths whom Babiak studied all went to college, and a couple even had PhDs. Their ruthless pursuit of self-interest was more easily accomplished in the white-collar realm, which their backgrounds had groomed them for, rather than the criminal one, which comes with much lousier odds.
'Psychopaths succeed in conventional society in large measure because few of us grasp that they are fundamentally different from ourselves. We assume that they, too, care about other people's feelings. This makes it easier for them to "play" us. Although they lack empathy, they develop an actor's expertise in evoking ours. While they don't care about us, "they have an element of emotional intelligence, of being able to see our emotions very clearly and manipulate them," says Michael Maccoby, a psychotherapist who has consulted for major corporations.
'Psychopaths are typically very likable. They make us believe that they reciprocate our loyalty and friendship. When we realize that they were conning us all along, we feel betrayed and foolish. "People see sociopathy in their personal lives, and they don't have a clue that it has a label or that others have encountered it," says Martha Stout, a psychologist at the Harvard Medical School and the author of the recent best-seller The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us (Broadway Books, 2005). "It makes them feel crazy or alone. It goes against our intuition that a small percentage of people can be so different from the rest of us -- and so evil. Good people don't want to believe it." '...
'The issue is whether we will continue to elevate, celebrate, and reward so many executives who, however charismatic, remain indifferent to hurting other people. Babiak says that while the first line of defense against psychopaths in the workplace is screening job candidates, the second line is a "culture of openness and trust, especially when the company is undergoing intense, chaotic change."
'Europe is far ahead of the United States in trying to deal with psychological abuse and manipulation at work. The "antibullying" movement in Europe has produced new laws in France and Sweden. Harvard's Stout suggests that the relentlessly individualistic culture of the United States contributes a lot to our problems. She points out that psychopathy has a dramatically lower incidence in certain Asian cultures, where the heritage has emphasized community bonds rather than glorified self-interest. "If we continue to go this way in our Western culture," she says, "evolutionarily speaking, it doesn't end well." '
http://www.citynews.ca/news/news.../
news_2081.aspx
'Neurotoxic chemicals fall into three main groups, heavy metals and metal compounds, solvents and other simple organic compounds, and pesticides. These chemicals cause damage to the brain and can lead to developmental and behavioural disabilities, particularly in children because their brains are still developing.'
http://medicalfreezone.blogspot....elation-
to.html
'Many vaccines today, including Whooping Cough, Diptheria, MMR, and to an even larger degree Hepatitis B - the latter being given to infants in the first 12-24 hours of their life - contain mercury in amounts far in excess of those cited as dangerous by the EPA as stated in 1998. The Hepatitis vaccine has been shown to cause serious neurological and ophthalmologic side effects. It is my opinion that benefits of vaccines are seriously undermined by their substantial risks.
'Reputable health organizations have requested single dose vaccines so that mercury would not be necessary, however, for reasons of cost to the pharmaceutical drug companies the practice of doling out mercury based vaccines to newborns continues. The practice is unconscionable. Only vaccines given intravenously or orally are considered safe. All vaccines carry a slew of toxins even if it is not as obvious as mercury based Thimeresol and parents should weigh the potential for risk very heavily before deciding whether or not to go along with the vaccination program.'
(TBC)
(Con't)
The following has a real government/industry spin to it - and no brains expected in their readers. Black people in polluted areas smoke twice as much as whites? And their kids soak it up?
What are they measuring and calling a nicotine metabolite?
They also carried quotes stating that the toxic load was of no concern.
You can distract some of the people some of the time - especially if their brains are being trashed to save industry costs.
http://www.wired.com/medtech/hea...s/2003/12/
61753
'In March, California researchers reported that San Francisco-area women have three to 10 times as much chemical flame retardant in their breast tissue as European or Japanese women.
'Indiana University researchers reported at the same time that levels in Indiana and California women and infants were 20 times higher than those in Sweden and Norway, which recently banned flame retardant.
'The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year released data from 2,500 volunteers tested for 116 pollutants and found such chemicals as mercury, uranium and cotinine, a chemical broken down from nicotine.
'The CDC also found that black children have twice the level of cotinine than other children, implying they were exposed to more secondhand smoke than their peers of other races.' (Don't worry about the profitable/cost-saving industry pollutants and other toxins - the problem is YOU.)
http://www.acupeds.com/metalindiet.html
'In 1998 a NIH study on 1,127 American military men clearly showed that the major contributor to human mercury body burden was from dental amalgam.
'In fact, if one had 4-5 amalgams they accounted for 80-90% of the mercury body burden.
'Further, analysis of mercury levels in the birth hair of infants showed the major contributor to be from the birth mother's dental amalgams.
'Even the World Health Organization lists dental amalgam as the major contributor to human mercury body burden.'
http://www.oceansalive.org/eat.c...?
subnav=mercury
'Mercury is a highly poisonous metal that poses a serious health risk to developing fetuses, babies and children, who may suffer brain damage and learning disabilities from prolonged or repeated exposure to small amounts of mercury. Although the metal occurs naturally in the environment, mercury levels in our air, land and water have increased dramatically since the rise of industrialization in the late 19th century.
'Mercury is released into the air primarily from industrial sources, falls to the ground in rain or snow and is deposited into water bodies, where it is converted into another highly toxic form of mercury (called methylmercury). Methlymercury then builds up in the tissues of fish and other animals, and in high concentrations can pose serious health risks to people who frequently eat contaminated fish. Based on the available data on mercury concentrations in fish tissue, Environmental Defense recommends limited consumption of certain fish.
'According to the Environmental Defense report Out of Control and Close to Home, local sources of mercury (i.e., coal-fired power plants, waste incinerators, and certain factories and mining operations) can create hot spots of pollution that can impact local communities. Mercury emissions are a global problem as well, since mercury can be transported through the atmosphere over large distances.'
'Mercury enters streams, rivers, lakes and oceans primarily through rain and surface water runoff. Bacteria can then convert it to an organic form called methylmercury -- the form that is dangerous to people. Although mercury levels are almost always low in water bodies, methylmercury biomagnifies up the food chain. When small fish with low mercury levels get eaten by bigger fish, the amount of mercury biomagnifies. For this reason, long-lived fish and top-level predators like swordfish and shark often have the highest mercury levels. According to EPA, mercury concentrations in fish can be 1 to 10 million times the mercury concentration in the water.
'The problem of mercury-contaminated fish is widespread. According to the EPA's National Listing of Fish and Wildlife Advisories, mercury advisories increased 163% between 1993 and 2003 (from 899 to 2,362). The number of states that have issued mercury advisories has risen steadily from 27 in 1993 to 45 in 2003. As of 2003, more than 13 million lake acres and almost 800,000 river miles were covered by some type of mercury advisory. Currently, 21 states have statewide mercury advisories in freshwater lakes or rivers, and 11 states have statewide advisories for mercury in their coastal waters. Statewide advisories urge people to limit their consumption of all fish and shellfish from freshwater or coastal areas.'
(Hardly consonant with claims of reduced industrial pollution - or claims that cotinine found in common foods - including most popular kid-foods like everything from french frys and potato chips to catsup and pasta sauce and therefore in the kids who eat them - is our major concern, on which all focus should be placed.)
http://kikipotamus.wordpress.com...adult-with-asd/
'Jackie next told us about the toxic loads we carry. Testing shows that people in the autistic spectrum have a much higher toxic load than neurotypical individuals.
'Interestingly enough, when a group of politicians volunteered for an Environmental Defense Fund study, it was found they also have a higher than average load. Nobody knows why. Perhaps in the case of the politicians, it’s their lifestyle: little rest, too much junk food eaten on the road, exposure to chemicals, etc.'
My comment - recall the earlier statement about neurotoxics impairing the brain.
Why are our government representatives drawn from the business pool, rather than that 'of the people'?
Because industry has such a stranglehold on society that those supported by industry get into office - even where the electorate doesn't blindly repeat industry propaganda filling the media and our too-often susceptible brains.
The article continues
'The CDCP's 1998 study reported that the average concentration of lead in all 20 million American preschoolers was 2.7 ug/dL, or 43 times as high as the natural background. [1] The 10 ug/dL now established as "safe" for children is 625 times greater than the average lead level in the bodies of the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North America. [17]
'The EPA permits our drinking water to have 15 ppb, but according to one of their own studies: "Drinking water supplied to 30 million people in 819 cities contains unhealthy levels of lead." [18]
' "Cover the Earth"
'In the United States, paint is now the chief source of the lead that poisons children.
'Leaded paint is still very common in older houses. More than 80% of U.S. housing built before 1980 contain some lead-based paints. In particular, white paint used to be made with lead carbonate and yellow paint from lead chromate.'
(My comment - there are many sources of industry-produced lead continuing to contaminate our bodies and the environment.
http://www.minesandcommunities.o...n/
press1297.htm
'8th December 2006
'NEW YORK - US environmental regulators are considering removing lead, a heavy metal linked to learning problems in children, from a list of regulated pollutants because past rules have greatly reduced levels of the toxin.
'An Environmental Protection Agency staff paper released on Tuesday said the agency would evaluate the status of lead as an air pollutant and "assess whether the revocation of the standard is an appropriate option for the Administrator to consider."
'The EPA said that from 1980 to 2005 the national annual lead concentrations have dropped more than 90 percent. Lead levels in air have mostly fallen because it was banned as a gasoline additive starting in the 1970s. Auto makers had asked for the ban because it damaged catalytic converters.
'Criteria pollutants on the National Ambient Air Quality list are reviewed every five years under the Clean Air Act. Now one of the leading emitters of lead pollution is the battery industry.
'An environmentalist said the EPA was pressured to review the status of lead as a pollutant by industry.
' "The EPA would be cutting a big sweetheart deal for the lead smelter industry if they revoked the listing," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Clean Air Watch. He said the lead assessment was an example of the EPA subordinating the expertise of agency scientists.
'EPA officials could not be immediately reached.
'In a letter last July to the EPA, industry group the Battery Council International urged the agency to "delete lead from the criteria pollutants."
'A US lawmaker also derided the EPA for considering the revocation of the lead listing.
'In a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, US Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said: "I am writing to urge you to renounce this dangerous proposal immediately. At a time when the public health impacts of environmental pollution are becoming better understood and our reason for concern grows, this announcement by EPA is particularly misdirected."
'EPA expects to release potential policy options on lead for the agency's administrator to consider next summer.'
http://www.foe.org/WSSD/doerun.html
'St. Louis-based Doe Run is the world's second largest lead mining and smelting company. The company is one of several heavily polluting companies owned by reclusive Long Island billionaire Ira Rennert, who has been called "the biggest private polluter in America."
'According to the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory, Doe Run is the biggest polluter in the state of Missouri, due in large part to toxic emissions from its 110-year old lead smelter in the town of Herculaneum (near St. Louis).'
(TBC)
(Con't)
http://www.sierraclub.org/
planet...communities.asp
'Barb Brunton, a pediatric nurse and mother of four, grew vegetables in her backyard in Omaha so that she could make homemade baby food for her children. But the soil in her yard was contaminated with high levels of lead, the legacy of a nearby lead refinery, and the vegetables she fed to her children were actually poisoning them. The refinery closed in 1997 and the EPA is now considering placing the site on the Superfund priority list, but a lack of federal funding could delay cleanup.
'Omaha is one of the 25 communities highlighted in the Sierra Club's new report, "Leaving Our Communities at Risk," which documents the real life consequences of Bush administration actions-and inactions. Of course, the Bush administration didn't create these problems, but by making it easier for old factories and power plants to increase pollution and letting toxic waste cleanup wither due to lack of funding, it further endangers these communities.
'Federal clean air protections, toxic waste cleanups, and environmental enforcement initiatives have been critical in protecting Americans' health and safeguarding our environment. But despite three decades of progress in this country to clean up our air, water, and toxic dump sites, the Bush administration is proposing policy changes that would put the health and safety of our families and communities at risk.
'In June 2002, the Bush administration proposed sweeping changes in the Clean Air Act's New Source Review program that would undermine 30 years of progress in cleaning up America's air. The law currently requires older industrial facilities to install modern pollution control equipment when they make changes that increase the amount of pollution they can produce. But under the administration's proposed new rules, some 17,000 power plants, oil refineries, chemical plants, steel mills, and other major sources of pollution will be allowed to increase their emissions without installing modern pollution controls.
'Meanwhile, the Bush administration is also damaging the Superfund toxic waste cleanup program by refusing to support the landmark bill's "polluter-pays" provision. ...'
...'Brunton believes that two of her children have suffered developmentally and required special education as a direct result of lead poisoning. Her oldest son could not speak a full sentence until he was five years old, and he was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder, for which he has been on medication. His hands shake so badly the school district has given him a computer for taking notes, and he wears a special glove to weigh down his writing hand.
'In 1999, at the age of one, Brunton's middle son tested lead positive with a blood lead level of 13. (Ten is considered to be the threshold of concern, although there is no "safe" level of lead.) "It immediately threw me into a tailspin," Brunton said, "because I realized I was seeing the same problems that we had already gone through with his older brother. I realized all the problems they were having were related to lead." ...'
...'The EPA conducted tests on area children over a 6-year period in the 1990s and found that between 26 and 42 percent of children tested had elevated blood lead levels. In 1999, the EPA began testing for lead soil contamination at child care centers and homes of children with elevated blood lead levels that were in the path of prevailing winds from the Asarco facility. About 42 percent of the yards tested met or exceeded the threshold for concern. The EPA proposed in February 2002 to put the Omaha lead site on the Superfund priority cleanup list; a decision is expected by the end of this year, but a funding shortfall could jeopardize cleanup.'
My comment - a constant refrain where health issues related to industry need to be studied or tackled: meanwhile, public tax funding goes to fund anti groups instead, to restrict the public...
For the sake of the children protected only against traditional democratic rights and freedoms.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/
2...ain562428.shtml
A town where industry and their lead pollution rule - and people are told to keep their children out of playgrounds, to stay out of parks, and off streets, not to garden or wear shoes into the house.
The real health threats caused by industrial precedence impinge always on the public - taught by PR to redirect costs and health concerns into attacks on each other, the aim industry-serving, PR-demanded restrictions on the activities, rights and protections of the public. Thus the cycle continues and profits increase.
To return to the article
'Although lead and mercury, another toxic metal, are no longer allowed in paint, other chemicals continue their legacy. According to their labels, certain paints contain solvents that "can cause permanent brain and nervous system damage." For some strange reason, paint seems to be the delivery system of choice for brain damage. (Will future archeologists be baffled by a society whose walls were more vibrant than its brain cells?)'...
' According to a report in The Providence Journal (Oct. 16), Whitehouse says the paint industry knew about the dangers of lead since the 1930s. He quotes industry officials in the 1950s who referred to lead poisoning as "mainly a problem in the slums and voicing more concerns over bad publicity than over the victims." What's worse, "paint company publicity extolled the health benefits and safety of lead paints."
'Another source of lead is vinyl mini-blinds made in Asia and Mexico. Laboratory tests show that when these particular mini-blinds deteriorate, their dust contains high levels of lead that can end up on children's hands and in their mouths. Also, candles with lead in their wicks have been shown to produce unhealthy levels of lead in the air for many hours — even after the candle is no longer burning.'
(My interjection - it's not the 'combustion particulate' produced by candles that's a problem, although it's presented as one despite the evidence of history industry PR denys, but the toxins which industry ensures we ignore in favour of generated fear of and transposed attack on common human activities, rather than instilling public control over industries.)
'Environmental lead exposure from industrial pollution and lead residues in soil further add to the accumulating burden of lead in the body and brain.'...
' Ending the Violence of Lead
'The time has come to acknowledge the real dangers of lead contamination. Lead threatens civility and compromises critical thinking — at the very time when these qualities are needed the most. Lead impairs our ability to distinguish between primitive impulse and intelligent action. Furthermore, its role in our epidemic of suicide and domestic violence has yet to be investigated.
'Humankind has barely ascended from the gene pool of thoughtlessness where reaction is the rule, and only by a slender thread does our humanity hang. This century, the human brain is being challenged by concentrations of lead and other heavy metals far beyond its evolutionary experience. The toxins we have loosed into the environment are corrosive to cognition and consciousness. By attacking the headquarters of our humanity, our priceless prefrontal cortex, they disintegrate our thin veneer of civilization — shredding that slender thread.'
(My interjection - what he said. Yeah!)
' "This, my dear Friend, is all I can at present recollect on the Subject.
'You will see by it, that the Opinion of this mischievous Effort from Lead is at least above Sixty Years old; and you will observe with Concern how long a useful Truth may be known and exist, before it is generally receiv'd and practis'd on.
'I am, ever, yours most affectionately, B. Franklin" '
(My comment - it has been noted that throughout recent history, famous people displaying the characteristics of psychopathy have detested smoking and attempted to eliminate its use.
In at least some cases, such as Hitler's, it appears that 'born-again non-smoker syndrome' may also have been in play.
The lunatic 'study' posted earlier made reference to 'pain' and 'sickness' supposedly associated with the 'action of nicotine on the nociceptive ’cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway’.'
Could this be because smoking stimulates portions of the brain which no longer function correctly, due to neurotoxic impediments/damage, and literally drives them crazier?)
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