One More Reason To Avoid Parenthood
Serious question: if secondhand smoke is as dangerous as they say, why don’t the majority of Americans over 30 suffer from lung problems by now? And why aren’t the Baby Boomers all dead? Considering how ubiquitous cigarette smoking used to be, there’s no way Social Security can be in any danger if the anti-smoke extremists are right. Also, I should be one of the oldest women in America
At any rate, the
posted by Jennifer Abel at 6:38 PM
39 Comments:
Jennifer,
The most beautiful thing about you is not your looks or the flaming curls, both of which are awesome. It is your fearlessness and tenacity in skewering windbag politicians.
I pray you will soon have a national forum on which to ply your trade.
NS
Jennifer,
While i love your no nonsense approach, and I agree that we are a knee jerk society when it comes to making laws, I do believe there is a small possibility you may be full of shit on this one. Keeping with your use of empirical and anecdotal evidence I'm going to offer some of my own. I believe Baby Boomers don't suffer the consequences of second hand smoke for 3 reasons: 1.) As children they spent far less time hermetically sealed in a smoke filled car stopped in traffic while being perpetually toted back and forth to daycare, Starbucks, Walmart, Home Depot etc...
2.) The Baby Boomers actually played outside and were a lot more active.
and
3.) cigarette smoke in 1940 did not contain this:
Acetaldehyde
Acetic Acid
Acetone
Acetylene
Acrolein
Acrylonitrile
Aluminum
Aminobiphenyl
Ammonia
Anabasine
Anatabine
Aniline
Anthracenes
Argon
Arsenic
Benz(a)anthracene
Benzene
Benzo(a)pyrene
Benzo(b)fluoranthene
Benzo(j)fluoranthene
Butadiene
Butane
Cadmium
Campesterol
Carbon Monoxide
Carbon Sulfide
Catechol
Chromium
Chrysene
Copper
Crotonaldehyde
Cyclotenes
DDT/Dieldrin
Dibenz(a,h)acridine
Dibenz(a,h)anthracene
Dibenz(a,j)acridine
Dibenzo(a,l)pyrene
Dibenzo(c,g)carbazole
Dimenthylhydrazine
Ethanol
Ethylcarbamate
Fluoranthenes
Fluorenes
Formaldehyde
Formic Acid
Furan
Glycerol
Hexamine
Hydrazine
Hydrogen cyanide
Hydrogen sulfide
Indeno(1,2,3-c,d)pyrene
Indole
Isoprene
Lead
Limonine
Linoleic Acid
Linolenic Acid
Magnesium
Mercury
Methane
Methanol
Methyl formate
Methylamineethylchrysene
Methylamine
Methylnitrosamino
Methylpyrrolidine
n-Nitrosoanabasine
n-Nitrosodiethanolamine
n-Nitrosodiethylamine
n-nitrosodimethylamine
n-Nitrosoethyl methylamine
n-Nitrosomorpholine
n-Nitrosopyrrolidine
Naphthalene
Naphthylamine
Neophytadienes
Nickel
Nicotine
Nitric Oxide
Nitrobenzene
Nitropropane
Nitrosamines
Nitrosonomicotine
Nitrous oxide phenols
Nomicotine
Palmitic acid
Phenanthrenes
Phenol
Picolines
Polonium-210
Propionic acid
Pyrenes
Pyrrolidine
Quinoline
Quinones
Scopoletin
Sitosterol
Skatole
Solanesol
Stearic acid
Stigmasterol
Styrene
Titanium
Toluene
Toluidine
Urethane
Vinyl Chloride
Vinylpyridine
As children they spent far less time hermetically sealed in a smoke filled car stopped in traffic while being perpetually toted back and forth to daycare, Starbucks, Walmart, Home Depot etc...
But the Boomers DID spend time breathing secondhand smoke in pretty much every public building they went to. Even schools had smoking areas back in the day.
The Baby Boomers actually played outside and were a lot more active.
Exercise will prevent your becoming a fatass, but has no effect on what smoke does or does not do to your lungs.
cigarette smoke in 1940 did not contain this:
Cigarette smoke in 1940 could still cause lung cancer IF you smoked enough of it and IF you had the right genetic makeup and so on and so forth.
I pray you will soon have a national forum on which to ply your trade.
That would be awesome, but I have no idea how to get one.
Sounds like we need to get ourselves some American Spirits and a mass spec.
Also, you do know that Acetic Acid is just vinegar, right? CH3COOH. Weak organic acid, doesn't ionize completely in solution. No big thing.
Carbon Monoxide is the natural result of burning basically any organic compound, so unless cigarettes used to come with catalytic converters that was likely in them.
DDT is a pesticide that is no longer sprayed industrially after that whole Silent Spring business. At least not in the US. It was banned here in 1972.
Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN) is naturally occurring in many plants, especially those that produce stony fruits, maybe tobacco, I'd have to check with a botanist. But according to wikipedia (always reliable of course) it occurs naturally in tobacco and some wood smokes.
Nicotine occurs in tobacco, natural product of the plant...or are you telling me that baby-boom cigarettes weren't addictive?
Formic Acid is, incidentally, the active ingredient in most ant and bee stings. It's another weak organic acid, and the reason that those over-the-counter bite treatments contain ammonia to neutralize it.
In any case, and that's a long list and I am but a budding chemist, it looks like at least a few of the items on it are bollocks, did you happen to get it from Truth.com or something?
Jen and Timothy,
cigarettes are FAR more addictive now then they were forty years ago. This was the whole point of all the tobacco company litigation. The tobacco companies genetically engineered the plants to raise nicotine levels and then lied about it. The genetic engineering is not the problem, that's just good business. It's the lying that was the problem. Also, Timothy, this list is public knowledge, it's available on the CDC website and is linked to from Philip Morris' own website it's widely regarded in the medical community as "not bollocks".
Jen, I absolutely agree with your position regarding legislating behavior. Hell, I endorse any behavior that helps to thin the herd (like smoking). However, I do think we should try to protect kids from their own idiotic parents.
Hell, I endorse any behavior that helps to thin the herd (like smoking).
So I presume you advocate people driving while intoxicated then? Perhaps your keyboard got out ahead of you a bit on this statement.
However, I do think we should try to protect kids from their own idiotic parents.
Jennifer's point is that this won't happen, and the enforcement is ridiculous since putting it on an open convertible shows that it's really not about the presence of smoke.
It's a "feel good" law that won't have any real effect but to further degrade our ability to live as a free people.
Personally, I grew up with both parents smoking, I don't. I finally freed myself, at least for the past few years, from the monkey of snuff on my back, but I don't get religious about it with others. I do recall having a much higher degree of respiratory (spelling nazi?) illness growing up, but it doesn't seem to have transferred to adulthood. I'm in the mid 40's, so I wasn't around for cigarettes in the 1940's, but these were in the 60's and 70's.
I don't allow smoking in my house, my vehicle, or any other place I have control over it, simply because it cakes the insides of my nasal passages with crap and I don't like it. I also find smokers smell of smoke, and it stinks worse to me than someone who hasn't showered in a couple days, and heavy smokers smell so badly of nicotine I cannot be in the same enclosed room with them. As Copenhangen has, in one can, about the same nicotine as 40 cigarettes, and in my heyday I was going through a can and change a day, I believe this is do to over sensitization to nicotine on my behalf. It's not that it stinks, it makes me physically sick, dizzy, barf-like, etc. This didn't use to be the case, so I believe this had more to do with my personal consumption than what I was exposed to growing up.
Now, the real question..."Golden god"???
iamagoldengod,
"Also, Timothy, this list is public knowledge, it's available on the CDC website and is linked to from Philip Morris' own website it's widely regarded in the medical community as "not bollocks."
Link, please? I took a quick gander at the CDC's site, but haven't yet found anything listing components of tobacco smoke now vs. then.
Regardless, if they're truly claiming that cigarettes made before 1940 didn't contain nicotine, then you really might want to consider scratching the CDC off your list of "not-bollocks sources."
You're right.
Smoking is good.
My bad.
But just to clarify,
In my previous post I wasn't implying that the CDC said they was no nicotine in cigarettes made in the 40's. What I said was that in the last 10 years the cigarette companies have been found guilty of INCREASING the levels of nicotine in tobacco through genetic manipulation and then lying about it.
Mr. Statuette: I'm interested to
1) see a link to this purported list on the CDC site.
2) Interested in a reasonable explanation as to why DDT, which is banned for pesicide use in the US and most of the world and has no other function to my knowledge, would have gotten into consumer tobacco products.
3) Would note that as part of the, possibly unconstitutional, Master Settlement Agreement tobacco companies must spend a certain amount of money promoting anti-smoking causes, none of which have been very fact-oriented. They're hysterical zealots like any other type of hysterical zealot. And I'm not sure the CDC can really be trusted given their terrible record on obesity.
Of course, I still think this can probably be solved by a Mass Spec and some American Spirits.
iamagoldengod,
"You're right.
Smoking is good.
My bad."
Sorry, I didn't realize you were a troll.
Nobody here is saying smoking is good, GG; we're saying thatsecondhand smoke isn't nearly as dangerous as the scaremongers would have you believe. And a lot of the anti-smoking activists have shown themselves more than willing to lie for what they consider a good cause.
I was wrong.
You've convinced me that 2nd hand smoke poses no danger to anyone, ever.
You've convinced me that 2nd hand smoke poses no danger to anyone, ever.
Nobody's saying that either; I certainly wouldn't blow smoke directly into the face of an asthmatic child, for example. All I'm saying is that, despite what scaremongers would have you believe, secondhand smoke isn't some uniquely dangerous thing, and as I pointed out in my story, if it WERE as dangerous as all that, we'd see HUGE levels of respiratory problems in today's adult population. Yet we haven't.
The problem is that people can't understand that "less than ideal" does not mean the same as "dangerous." Take two kids identical in every way, and both fed nice, well-balanced meals three times a day. But Kid Number One is allowed to have cookies or candy for dessert, whereas Kid Number Two is given fruit. Is fruit healthier than candy? Absolutely. Does this mean the candy-eater is destined for a lifetime of health problems and obesity? No. And a kid who smells secondhand smoke isn't destined for trouble either; if he were, we'd already see enormous levels of lung disease in the adult population, and the Baby Boomers would mostly be dead. They were exposed to FAR more secondhand smoke than today's youth.
And a lot of the anti-smoking activists have shown themselves more than willing to lie for what they consider a good cause.
They have that in common with a lot of people who think they represent a good cause, unfortunately, and need laws passed to bolster their position. The bigger problem is the people that buy it. Ditech needs to be sued for false advertising with their "People are smart" campaign.
I, too, would like a link to a reputable source claiming those chemicals were not present in cigarette smoke prior to the 1940s.
Many of those compounds are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (listed separately to make them seem more ominous), and PAHs are compounds formed by incomplete combustion of carbon compounds. Gathering a large amount of leaves and wood and setting them afire would produce PAHs, so it is no surprise that burning tobacco leaves would do the same.
Other compounds on that list are formed in high-temperature settings, such as nitrogen-containing hydrocarbons. Interestingly enough, those are listed separately, too, which makes me suspect that list is meant more to be scary than informative.
Anti-Smoker Questionaire:
(please choose one)
I hate smokers/smoking because....
A. The smell of smoke is icky and yucky, it makes my hair and clothes stink and I hate walking into a bar/restaurant where people are smoking. So rather than take advantage of the free market and go somewhere that is voluntarily smoke free, I would rather use the power of the state to impose my personal preference on my fellow citizens.
B. My beloved ___________ (choose one: husband, wife, father, mother, brother, sister, nephew, niece, uncle, aunt, maid, dog, cat, goldfish, gay lover) died from ________(choose one: cancer, heart disease, emphysema, car crash, train wreck, terrorist attack, sting ray) because of their smoking.
C. I smoked for _____ (# of years) and now I am ________ (choose one: sick, dead, born again, enlightened, ashamed of myself) and want to share my experience with others.
D. The Big Tobacco companies are lying scumbags and must pay! (you’re not exactly coming down off the mountain with the tablets there)
E. I represent Big Pharmaceutical interests that benefit from the anti-smoking movement because it increases the sales of our Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) products.
F. I am a deeply caring individual in the mold of Mother Theresa and I am speaking out due to my benevolent, philanthropic, altruistic concern about the health of my fellow man.
G. I am a research scientist and grant junky, and if I don’t tow the party line my grant money will disappear.
H. I’m just a garden variety Fascist and Totalitarian and get a ______ (choose one: cheap thrill, natural high, orgasm) by imposing my will on other people.
I. I am a simpleton who believes in bogus studies, junk science, the Easter Bunny and the Toothfairy. I fear that because I walked into a bar on Spring Break in 1987, and was exposed to Second Hand Smoke I now suffer from ______(choose one: AIDS, Herpes, Athlete’s Foot, Jock Itch, male pattern baldness, or genital warts)
J. I am a disgruntled, prissy and angry employee of a ______(choose one: bar, restaurant, club, casino) who can't leave the job because I am a _______(choose one: slave, indentured servant, sweatshop laborer, illegal immigrant) and had no idea there was smoking going on in the place before I took the job.
K. An elected public serpent, serving as a _____ (choose one: State Assemblywoman, Senator, Freeholder, city councilman, mayor) and I have failed miserably in my job and trying to tackle really tough problems like _____ (choose one: gang violence, income taxes, property taxes, crime, corruption), so I will support a smoking ban based on the talking points and literature that "L" has given me and claim that I have actually accomplished something to help my constituents.
L. A professional anti-tobacco activist who makes $450,000 per year. MY GOAL IS TO REDUCE SMOKING RATES FROM 25% TO BELOW 10%. KICKING THEM OUT OF THEIR FAVORITE BAR AND RESTAURANT IS JUST A SMALL STEP TO COERCE THEM TO QUIT. I DON'T EVEN BELIEVE THE SHS NONSENSE MYSELF! Don't you dare try to ban cigarettes, if you do I will have to go back to my previous job of ______(choose one: prostitute, drug dealer, pimp, state assemblyman, mayor) where I won't make nearly as much money and the bank will foreclose on my seaside villa and repo my _______(choose one: Lexus, Mercedes, BMW, Hummer, Infiniti, Acura, Volvo, Bentley). I take advantage of the prejudices of categories A-K above to accomplish my goal.
M. I don’t fit any of the above categories, I just like to argue with people.
To the anti smoking survey I answer:
I, M and a little bit of F.
By the way here is that link to the CDC site.
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/sgr_2000/highlights/highlight_tobacco.htm
It doesn't have a complete list, it just mentions there are 4000 additives 43 of which are know carcinogens. I guess that's not a bad ratio.
The answer to why all of those exotic compounds are found in cigarette smoke including DDT is that many come from the pesticides that are used on the plants. Also, have you ever noticed that if you light a cigarette and put it down it will burn at a constant speed completely unaided. Now try that with an American Spirit or a joint or any other "organic" tobacco product. It won't stay lit. The Tobacco industry, aside from increasing the levels of nicotine, spend huge sums of money to figure out which chemicals would allow a cigarette to do that. (It must be the butane or maybe the mercury)
Shit.
the link didn't post properly.
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/sgr_2000/highlights/highlight_tobacco.htm
damn it!
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/
sgr/sgr_2000/highlights/highlight_tobacco.htm
I personally thing this would be one more bogus thing that law-enforcement would not have the time to bother with. Here in Texas we have a burn ban...but you don't see many tickets at all being given for lit butts being flicked out of windows. Ah, the joys of grass fires & wild fires (not to mention the littering that goes along with it that is also illegal).
So, let's just give law enforcement one more thing that they can't possibly try to enforce.
I personally thing this would be one more bogus thing that law-enforcement would not have the time to bother with.
Here's an advance peek into a little news brief from next week's issue of My Humble Employer: the legislature's got a proposed bill that would let municipalities keep half of the revenue from any motor-vehicle tickets they pass out. Believe me, the cops will find time to enforce this because it'll be very profitable.
It doesn't have a complete list, it just mentions there are 4000 additives 43 of which are know carcinogens. I guess that's not a bad ratio.
But when dealing with secondhand smoke, simply being a "known carcinogen" isn't enough; there's also the matter of how much of said carcinogen is needed to cause actual danger. Even the old red M&M dye will give you cancer--when you're a lab rat fed an amount of dye equivalent to eating several hundred pounds of M&Ms every day. The simple fact that red M&M dye, a known carcinogen, is present in food doesn't mean that eating said food is going to give you cancer.
Cigarettes keep burning because of the tabacco is laced with saltpeter.
This is why smokers suffer more from erectile dysfunction than non-smokers.
Hey Jen, You need to write an investigative piece exposing the link between cigarette companies and the makers of Viagra and Cialis.
An elected public serpent
RFLMAO!!! Seriously - that's funny!
BTW, cigarettes keep burning because of what's in the paper used to roll them. In fact there was a move afoot several years ago to get the manufacturers to change the paper so that cigarettes would go out when laid in an ashtray or dropped on a carpet or piece of furniture.
As far as increasing the nicotine content of cigarette tobacco by genetic manipulation - I thought the allegation was that the companies were increasing the amount of nicotine by manipulating the mixture in their reconstituted tobacco blends.
In any event second hand tobacco smoke is not altogether different than smoke from other burning plants. Burning off land to clear it or prepare it for replanting, burning trash and weeds, and even wood smoke are all very unhealthy to breathe. The second hand smoke from your neighbor's wood stove or barbacue grill isn't good for you either - you want to outlaw that, too?
(Something tells me there are those who do.)
There probably are people who would gladly outlaw that, Smartass. These are the fools who don't understand the difference between "increased risk" and "guaranteed danger." Did you ever read the list of possible side effects of aspirin? Dangerous! Outlaw it! Candy increases your risk of diabetes--outlaw it! Alcohol increases your risk of becoming a worthless drunk. Video games increase the risk of carpal tunnel.
And don't even get me started on all the nasty carcinogens in car exhaust.
Did you ever read the list of possible side effects of aspirin?
No. But when I was around nine years old I came across an old school book from the early part of the twentieth century that claimed "Aspirin"* was or could be a very dangerous poison. :-)
Everything has side effects of one kind or another, if used improperly - and everything has a risk attached to it. People want a risk-free world to live in and they have been led to believe that they are entitled to one. Personally I think a great deal of all this nonsense is instigated by the legal profession just so they can have something to bring lawsuits over. And naturally it just so happens that most lawmakers are also lawyers. It must be nice to be able to make all the rules to further one's own advantage.
*(For those who don't know, Aspirin was once a company brand name rather than the generic name it is now.)
Aspirin certainly is poisonous; if you eat a whole bottle right now you'll be dead soon, and your death will be a horrible one. But that doesn't mean we should outlaw it or make it prescription-only on the grounds that too much of it will kill you.
For that matter, children need lots of sleep to grow up strong and healthy. And certainly, there are irresponsible jackass parents who don't make sure their kids get enough sleep. Is this bad? Hell, yes. Does this mean the government should step in with mandated bedtimes for kids? Hell, no. Letting a few kids suffer disadvantages from not enough sleep is the lesser evil.
When I was a kid my family would often take roadtrips to visit relatives in other states, and would often drive at night to avoid bad traffic. Sometimes I'd sleep in the backseat, but other times I was too excited to sleep (and I was a bit of a night owl even then). If you lurked in rest areas on the Jersey Turnpike in the late 70s or early 80s, once in awhile you'd catch of glimpse of me as a tousle-headed, exhausted child, shuffling from the back of my parents' van at two or three in the morning to use the bathroom. God forbid some meddling government busybody had the authority to tell my parents "How DARE you let such a young child be out of bed and out in the world at such an hour! In order to protect your child, we're either going to lock her parents in jail or fine them a sum of money which they will NOT be able to thusly spend on items your child wants or needs! There there, little Jennifer. Aren't you glad that Big Daddy Government is looking out for you?"
Of course, as I think about it those road trips my parents took from Virginia to see relatives in New England or the Midwest would already be illegal today, because at night my parents would fold down the backseat of either our van or our Plymouth Horizon, and make a bed where my brother and I could lie down. But we were not fastened in by seatbelts, which is illegal nowadays, and anyway we were still so young that under today's laws, we'd still have been required to sit in child-restraint seats anyway.
Oh, yes, having to sit up and sit still for long periods of time on the road is MUCH better than laying down comfortably as my brother and I did. Thanks, Big Daddy Government!
Cigarettes keep burning because of the tabacco is laced with saltpeter.
You could always roll your own. When I smoked, I used to use "Drum". (If you use "Bugler" people think you've just been released from jail).
Handrolling tobacco has fewer chemicals and is cheaper, too. You have to supply your own filters if you want them, though.
...because at night my parents would fold down the backseat of either our van or our Plymouth Horizon, and make a bed where my brother and I could lie down.
WHAT?! A YOUNG BOY AND GIRL SLEEPING TOGETHER IN THE SAME BED???!!!
Horrors!!! Someone must DO something about this - the virtue and innocence of our children is at stake. Pass some laws. Appoint a commission to investigate the matter. Let them hire a consulting company to do a multi-million dollar study about this. If we ignore this sort of child neglect, the next thing will be little children taking a bath together!!!
;-)
tousle-headed, exhausted child, shuffling from the back of my parents' van
Your parents took you on road trips in a van back in the seventies? Tell the truth now - your real name is Dharma and you are really a blond who is married to a guy named Greg. Right?
No hippie street cred, sadly; this was one of those plushed-out 70s family vans that were sort of the forefunner of the modern minivan, I think.
But here's a true story: for a few months when I was six years old, I *DID* live with my mother and brother in an old VW van with the pop-top bed ceiling. My Navy father had just been transferred from a base in Connecticut to a ship docked in Virginia, and had to go on a long Med cruise or something. And our Connecticut house had been sold but we hadn't found a Virginia house to live in, so my parents put most of our stuff in Virginia storage, and that summer me, my mom and my year-old brother lived in a campground for a few months.
I thought it was the coolest thing EVER. I slept in the pop-top roof and my mom slept below with the baby.
I'm guessing Mom found it much less fun.
It doesn't have a complete list, it just mentions there are 4000 additives 43 of which are know carcinogens. I guess that's not a bad ratio.
No, it says there are 4,000 chemical compounds in tobacco smoke. "Chemical compounds" refers to both naturally occurring compounds and added compounds.
It does not say that those compounds are unique to tobacco smoke, and it does not say those compounds were absent before the 1940s. As I pointed out before, burning any organic material releases many chemical compounds, so the fact that 4,000 are released from tobacco smoke is not useful information.
The claim of 43 carcinogens is not helpful, either. Again, of those compounds released during the burning of organic material, some are carcinogens.
I don't doubt that tobacco smoke has some unique constituents due to the pesticides and additives used. However, the 4,000/43 information does not tell us those compounds, and is little more than a scare tactic.
My Navy father had just been transferred from a base in Connecticut to a ship docked in Virginia, and had to go on a long Med cruise or something.
I would have given anything to go on a Med cruise when I was in the Navy - well anything but my signature on a re-enlistment contract - but I always ended up in the Pacific with sea duty.
I can identify with your childhood experiences. In the fifties and before people would often travel by car with their children. It was customary to let the kids sleep in the back seat or the back of the station wagon while the parents drove. Back then seat belts were not required even for adults most places and mothers would routinely drive with their newborns just lying on the front seat beside them. I remember as a kid being allowed to stand up in the floor boards behind the back of the front seats - until I would get on my father's nerves, that is.
My family lived up north until I was six, at which time we moved from Chicago to Houston. All our belongings were packed up and shipped by truck, but we made the trip in a car. Took us about half a week, as I recall. Somehow the back seat would fold down and my brother and I could sleep back there on the way. We stopped at motels for the nights usually, but we still practically lived out of the car. Conn (my brother) and I thought it was neat - we were going to Texas where there were cowboys and horses everywhere! Or so little kids thought.
:-)
No, it says there are 4,000 chemical compounds in tobacco smoke. "Chemical compounds" refers to both naturally occurring compounds and added compounds.
I wonder how many there are in "fresh air"? Just curious. I'll go back to work now.
http://burningissues.org/car-www/science/table2.htm
If you think the supposed "chemicals" in cigarette smoke are unique to tobacco you are greatly mistaken. The same chemicals can be found in any burning plant material including wood. Burning 40 lbs of lumber in your fireplace is equivalent to burning 40 lbs of tobacco (~20,000 cigarettes), while 99% of it goes up the chimney 1% or 200 cigarettes worth goes right into your house. Where are the calls for banning fireplaces?
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