Fact or Fiction 3

The (US) Surgeon General's Report concluded "there is no safe level of secondhand smoke.”

Actually, the Surgeon General’s Report concluded no such thing. No safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke can be easily determined simply because, as the anti-smoker brigade will be quick to tell you, there are over 4,000 chemicals in SHS. Whether that number is accurate or not is open to debate. At any rate, safe exposure levels to each of the individual components of secondhand smoke have been determined.

OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Association), in the US, is responsible for determining permissible safe exposure levels for hazardous workplace substances, including the many chemicals in tobacco.

OSHA has stated regarding secondhand smoke: "Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000) ... It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded."

Recommended Reading: Clean Air Quality American Cancer Society Test Results