1000 Canadians die annually from exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS).
Actually, there has never been a death recorded anywhere in the world from passive smoking. The Health Canada web site says quite clearly that the 1000 deaths figure for Canada is “estimated”. Stats Canada does not list either smoking or exposure to SHS as a cause of death for any of the roughly 230,000 deaths reported annually in Canada.
The truth is that it is simply not possible for medical science to investigate every death, determine the lifetime level of exposure to other suspected carcinogens (including diet and occupational exposure) and attribute the cause of death specifically to SHS exposure.
In fact, the specific cause of any cancer is impossible to determine and therefore science has to rely on risk factors to infer a cause. In the case of exposure to SHS, this science has been deliberately exaggerated and distorted by the anti-smoker cartel.
Recommended Reading: The causes of cancer
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
It has been proven conclusively that exposure to secondhand smoke causes cancer in children.
The word “conclusively” is misleading. Very little of what you hear about the health effects of secondhand smoke is, in fact, conclusive. A study conducted in 1998 by IARC, an agency of the World Health Organization, found that “ETS exposure during childhood was not associated with an increased risk of lung cancer (odds ratio [OR] for ever exposure = 0.78; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.64-0 – 0. 96)”.
With a relative risk of only 0.78 and the upper and lower confidence intervals being less than one, this suggests that childhood exposure to secondhand smoke may have a beneficial effect in preventing lung cancer in later years. The results were so at odds with what the WHO was trying to prove, that they tried to bury the study. It was published only after the study was brought to light by the London Telegraph through British freedom of information laws
Recommended Reading:
Hittman Chronicles
Lorraine Mooney - Wall Street Journal
1000 Canadians die annually from exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS).
