'Tobacco smoke biggest home pollutant in Ireland' – the truth behind the headline
Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at 17:43 'Tobacco smoke is biggest home pollutant in Ireland' screams a headline in today's Irish Times.
It's based on a study that compared the impact of tobacco smoking in the home with households that use coal, wood and peat for heating and gas for cooking.
As always there's good news:
Concentrations of air pollution in homes using coal, wood, peat and gas for cooking were low, and mostly well within health-based standards.
And bad news:
The researchers concluded that “exposure to environmental tobacco smoke represents the greatest impact on health from combustion derived air pollution in the home”.
But of course.
[Researchers] then went on to state that the exposure of non-smokers to ETS in the home accounts for a health burden that is “broadly comparable to that currently experienced in both countries from road traffic accidents and there is a real need for public health policy and research professionals to develop interventions to address this”.
See: Tobacco smoke is biggest home pollutant in Ireland
What the Irish Times didn't mention is this. The study was conducted on the following sample group: 20 households that used peat as heating fuel, 20 that used coal, 20 that used wood, 20 that used a gas stove to cook, and 20 that had at least one adult resident smoker (with no other combustion source present).
Of the 20 homes that had "at least one adult resident smoker", eleven were in Galway and nine in and around Aberdeen.
In other words, the claim that 'Tobacco smoke is biggest home pollutant in Ireland' was based on a sample of just eleven households in one Irish city.
See Indoor Air Pollution and Health.
Ignoring this the Irish Times notes that 'the private home remains a last bastion of privilege for smokers' before adding:
[The] report recommends that there should be a co-ordinated national campaign to educate smokers and non-smokers about the health effects of environmental tobacco smoke in the home ...
The report’s authors have called for improved national survey campaigns to determine what proportion of the population is exposed to environmental tobacco smoke at home.
Their recommendations include a co-ordinated national campaign to educate smokers and non-smokers about the health effects from smoking at home and the promotion of smoke-free homes.
Well, we all know where this is going.
How ironic that my Forest colleague John Mallon is currently on tour in Ireland warning people about "creeping prohibition".
Reader Comments (9)
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/secondhand_smoke/general_facts/
Second hand smoke in children causes:
More frequent and severe asthma attacks/Respiratory symptoms/Respiratory infections
It increases their lung cancer risk by 20–30%.
So unless it's all one big conspiracy by the center for disease control and hundreds of thousands of scientists and doctors around the world...
I'd say it's pretty safe to say that these studies are not 'crap' or 'junk science'.
What is the point of smoking around children and exposing them to second hand smoke?
You can't honestly think it's a good thing to do, that's ridiculous.
Oddly, I stumbled upon this abstract on Pubmed which looks, for all the world, to be the same 'study' - same authors, same protocols, same samples in the same locations etc. Yet it was published on 9 November 2011!
What was even more odd, though was that the reported average PM2.5 particulate concentration for 'homes with smokers' has risen from 99 μg/m3, as reported in 2011, to 143 μg/m3 in the latest incarnation!
I can't say I would give much credence to any study whose 'headline' result (because, let's be honest, this is just the usual suspects attempting yet another 'hatchet job' on smoking - it has bugger-all to do with the Trojan Horse of fuel usage in cooking and heating) can magically change by 44% between publication dates! How reliable can their measurements be with a swing like this?
Apart from that, there is absolutely nothing to conclude here regarding health effects. Comparing indoor PM2.5 with two (arbitrary) outdoor air guidelines shows nothing other than some (not all) Irish and Scottish homes (especially the latter it would appear) weren't very well ventilated - but then this was all carried out over a winter period, so why should we be surprised?
Also, note that the 143 μg/m3 is an average of 20 values (households) in a range from 21 to 463 - ie the 'worst' household had a level that was 22 times higher than the best! A credible sample? I think not.
Still, they got the headline they wanted, I suppose, even if it, and the underlying study itself, are factually wrong on so many counts.
No comments on the Irish Times article?
Indicates that the article is 'paid for' propaganda.
But it is ONLY propaganda. It is akin to the propaganda that the Irish Customs have stopped smuggling.
In view of the fact that the Italians are intent upon taxing ecigs, and that the French are intent upon delaying the effects of duty increases, it is only a matter of time before the Exchequer of the Irish Government notice the loss of tobacco duty income. But I doubt that the Irish Government will tell THE PEOPLE that general taxation must be increased on non-smokers to replace the income from smokers who have quit.
------------
An awful lot of people have QUIT being punished, but have not quit the enjoyment of tobacco.
Using similar Science fiction methods I have determined that during a ten-minute walk along a busy city street a non-smoker would inhale the equivalent of sixty-cigarettes-worth of PAHC's.
@jon
nicotine has been used to treat respiratory disorders. It increases respiratory drive, promoting better breathing.
Functionally, the purpose of tobacco use is to deliver nicotine, a CNS and respiratory stimulant
The only purpose of this junk study is to feed the paranoia of hysterics, further promote hate of a targeted consumer group, and devalue the homes and property of people they dislike.
Such discrimination and hate campaigning should be illegal and would be for any other group. That's why most voters have turned away from the 3 main parties and why politics is changing.
Those parties that can't recognise prejudice and discrimination because of their own personal dislike of a legal product and its consumers are dangerous to society.
Who's next? I hear cars are the new tobacco - aka the new target for greedy, lying, bigoted and discriminatory healthists in it for themselves.
Was any "charity" that allegedly "cares" for the people it targets ever so despised by the very people it purports to work for. I very much doubt it.
They do not speak in our name nor that of our children. Hands off our kids. They do not belong to the state or ASH.
Jon
Rather than relying for your 'facts' on a standard, bureaucratic anti-tobacco text ("fact sheet" indeed!), why not spend five minutes reading this:
Multicenter Case–Control Study of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Cancer in Europe
This study had the following objective:
"Since 1988, the International Agency for Research on Cancer
(IARC) has coordinated an international, multicenter, case–
control study of lung cancer in nonsmokers. The main objective
of this study was to provide an estimate of the risk of lung cancer
from exposure to ETS in western European populations that
would be more precise than estimates available at that time.
Secondary objectives of the study were to address more detailed
aspects of the association between ETS and lung cancer and to
study the role of factors other than ETS in lung carcinogenesis
in nonsmokers. The study was designed originally to have a
statistical power of 80% to detect a relative risk of 1.3 (at a 5%
level of statistical significance) "
So, since IARC is a WHO subsidiary agency, you should be interested in the findings, yes?
"A total of 389 case subjects and 1021 control subjects reported ever having been exposed to ETS during childhood, for an overall odds ratio (OR) of 0.78 (95% CI - 0.64–0.96)"
Which, if you understand risk statistics at all, shows that children exposed to second-hand tobacco smoke have a decreased risk of getting lung cancer - a 22% decrease.
This was, as you can see, pretty consistent across many European countries, and also happened to be the only risk value in the whole study that achieved the basic, rudimentary 95% threshhold of statistical significance.
So, given your willingness to believe what the 'authorities' tell you, please get these facts into your head:
1. Second-hand tobacco smoke exposure in childhood has a protective effect against lung cancer in later life.
2. This is the main outcome from a study undertaken by The World Health Organisation.
3. In statistical terms, this risk factor is more valid than the majority of results in ETS studies that show the opposite effect.
Given that the WHO (and co-collaborators) have tried desperately to bury this unfortunate truth, do you perhaps now get an inkling as to why some of us will describe pretty much every study undertaken with an anti-tobacco agenda as "crap" or "junk"?
If the cap fits.....
Jon says,
"So unless it's all one big conspiracy by the center for disease control and hundreds of thousands of scientists and doctors around the world...
I'd say it's pretty safe to say that these studies are not 'crap' or 'junk science'."
Firstly, hundreds of thousands are not involved in these studies.`Probably hundreds are involved in the epidemiology publications justifying smoking bans and the number of major players is less than 100. Secondly, most of these studies are indeed junk science. Many in the anti tobacco industry admit this but excuse them by the end justifying the means. Most famously, Professor Sir Richard Doll, credited with demonstrating a strong link between smoking and lung cancer, declared on Desert Island
Discs that being in the presence of a smoker would pose him negligible risk. When asked for a quote on the first day of the smoking ban, Doll's colleague, Professor Sir Richard Peto, said only that he hoped it would encourage people to give up.
Passive smoking in a smoky bar for four hours a day is equivalent to actual smoking of around ten cigarettes a year. Not enough to harm an adult but, I agree, not good for a small child. A proportionate measure would be not to smoke in the rooms the child goes into until it has gone to bed, and then open the windows for a few minutes before the child again uses the room the next day.
Think of a number why don't you
Yes it’s that time of year again when junk science rears its ludicrous head. There have been two excellent finds one by Simon and the other by BrianB.
It’s fairly difficult to spot in reading the study that only 11 homes in the whole of Ireland were under consideration over the observation period. On first reading it would appear that 100 homes were under observation, of course we now know that the screaming headline in the Irish times suggesting that 'Tobacco smoke is biggest home pollutant in Ireland' is a gross exageration and is only applicable to 11 homes.
In homes with resident smokers then higher particulate concentrations were found as BrianB points out, suddenly jumping from 99 μg/m3 (from an earlier study done in 2011), to 143 μg/m3 in the more recent study. Why would that figure suddenly change when a peer review would quite naturally have been carried out to validate this data before publication?
It can only mean that the data has been changed deliberately. Not only that, no reference to that change or explanation for that change has been given.
One would think that any home burning coal, wood or peat would have a proper extraction chimney, and so the smoke would not enter the room in which its being burnt – so how valid would any figures relating to concentrations of these combustible fuels be?
The Irish Times article says this, ‘As a result, the amount of air entering and leaving a typical building is estimated to be 10 times lower now than it was 30 years ago.’ This statement suggests that tobacco particulate concentrations would be higher in newer houses than in older properties. So, were any findings taken from older properties (to give balance), since there are more properties over 30 years old than not.
Junk science doesn’t even begin to describe this compost heap.
Tobacco smoke the most biggest pollutant in homes in ireland..really!! Was it not ireland who where the first to ban smoking in nearly all public places?
so the only place for them now is their private home....so antis - please keep out of peoples private life and property!!