Nothing to say, smokophobes?

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(It’ll be quick visits this week. I have drawn morning shifts and mornings are bad for me. They mean I have to sleep when other people do and that’s just not right. Next week I have late shifts, which suit my nocturnal nature)

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Well, finally even the Daily Mail has realised that a single car produces far more air pollution than several Wenbley Stadiums full of smokers. Okay, not quite. Their headline suggests they are shocked to find that car exhausts are even more dangerous than smoking.

Smoking is now so dangerous that the ferry-boat over the river Styx has ‘no smoking’ signs all over it. Finding something even more dangerous must be like finding something Death himself would be scared of.

Picture the scene:

Death: “It is time, horrible little man, to meet your Maker.”

Corpse: “About time too. I have a few words to say about the quality control processes in his construction shop.”

Death: “Um, well, you’ll have to take that up with the management.”

Corpse: “Fine. Time for one last smoke before we go?”

Death (recoils): “A smoker? Oh, wait, maybe I can come back another time.”

Anyway, back to that article. It’s something anyone with any sense realised a long, long time ago but the drones didn’t want to hear. What’s interesting is the comments.

Even if you click on ‘worst rated’, there is not one antismoker to be seen. Not one.

In order to refute this, they will have to claim that sucking on an exhaust pipe is actually less dangerous than smoking a cigarette. That could break the resolve of all but the most lunatic of their drones. One of them is then going to have to try it, just to prove to a nearby smoker that it’s safer.

Someone is going to barrel up to a smoker, muster both digits of their IQ and insist that inhaling the exhaust of the chugging 4×4 beside them is safer than a cigarette.

Some smokers (no names here) might say “I bet you wouldn’t do it. I bet you wouldn’t hold your mouth to that exhaust pipe for the length of time it takes me to smoke just one.” Then some smokers might be inclined to roll up a really big fat one and take their time.

One dead drone as a result of ‘studies have shown’ propaganda and ASH are in deep trouble.

I think they’re just hoping it’ll go away.  It won’t.

Or maybe they’re busy with applying the opening salvo of the tobacco termplate to meat. So far, it’s a suggestion, developing into a recommendation and fast becoming a ‘we must do something’.

I give it ten years before there are warning labels, taxes and plain packaging on meat.

Anyway, early night again. Bah. The really fierce nightmares don’t turn up till much later, and those are the ones that inspire the stories. Well, those and the Daily Mail…

 

17 thoughts on “Nothing to say, smokophobes?”

  1. You have my sympathy, I hate mornings too, funny how many posters are night owls, must be caused by smoking! Everything else is. I am really fed up, I have been trying to get travel insurance, I say about the cancer etc. all seems to be going well then comes the fatal question, did you smoke? Then do you still smoke? as soon as I say yes that’s it. I am told they will not cover anyone with respiratory illness if they still smoke. Since the cancer won’t suddenly recur in two weeks I am quite happy to exclude it. Just have to keep trying, if anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them. I wouldn’t bother it is really just in case of accidents.

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      • Good idea from you both but I might have a problem having been honest to one insurer I suspect they might share information! My ex goes to America without insurance and he had cancer and still smokes too, said it was too expensive though he is fine now. I would rather get it if I can but might have to take a chance.

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        • I haven’t bought travel insurance (health or otherwise) in years and years. It rather depends on where you are going as to how much of a problem not having it will be in the event of an accident. (That was a rather convoluted sentence – did it make sense?) Anyway, as I say, I never bother. But then, I’m one of life’s perennial chancers, so I wouldn’t, would I!

          I only ever bought insurance when I went on holiday with young children (and probably then only at the insistence of my ex – I don’t really remember). I didn’t bother when I took my 18 YO daughter with me to Thailand 14 years ago, if I recollect. I think because they wanted silly money.

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          • I will take the chance if I have to, I am not remotely concerned about the cancer, it is hardly likely to suddenly recur in two weeks in Canada. I can pay for anything minor but slightly concerned about an accident or stroke. I had a TIA seven years ago, I have been fine since but you never know and that scares me a lot more than cancer, ok if it kills me but not if I was left physically or worse mentally damaged. Funny thing is I lost three friends to lung cancer last year and not one of them ever smoked or lived with smokers.

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    • Lie cherie!!!
      Like they all lie. I am an avid smoker, I am totally in agreement with all things smoking, ready made cigs, rollies, e-cigs, grow your own, but when it comes to being asked “do you smoke” by ANYONE in authority, I would say no. Cheeky effers for even asking, but believe me, to lie makes things so much easier as I found out when my poor ex-husband was trying to find a new place to rent. Three la

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      • ooops, got cut-off! 3 prospective landlords asked do you smoke, and when he said yes, they refused to rent to him. He keeps a beautiful house. Can paint and decorate etc. So I told him “say no next time”. Lo and behold, he got a lovely place.

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        • You’re absolutely right of course, gran. And we should feel not even the slightest twinge of guilt (not that I would anyway) because the antis have been lying through their teeth for decades. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and all that.

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  2. They caught me, and I must finally completet one of these course things. So I am now having to leave the house in DAYLIGHT!

    BASTARDS!

    Why start at 08:00, when we finish at 14:00? I mean, thats a whole days sleep ruined, when we could just as easily start at 20:00 and finish at 02:00!

    “Oh but there are women with children.”

    SO FUCKING WHAT? Either stop shagging, or get a bastartd minder!

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  4. Stories you may have missed.

    2007

    “It was a murder mystery playing out in major cities across the country and perplexing scientists. Thousands of people were dying from strokes and heart attacks within 24 hours of a spike in microscopic pollution — tiny particles that spew from the exhaust of diesel trucks, buses and coal-burning factories.”

    “The study identifies how these tiny pieces of soot — called particulate matter air pollution — kill people at risk and tells how they can protect themselves from these pollution-related strokes and heart attacks”

    “The study found that lungs inflamed by the pollution secrete a substance, interleukin-6, which causes an increased tendency for blood to coagulate or clot. This raises the risk of a fatal heart attack or stroke in people with cardiovascular disease such as coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure or a history of stroke.”

    “This is a critical missing piece of the puzzle that has eluded scientists for decades”
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070921130738.htm

    Devil in the diesel

    “A COMPOUND discovered in the exhaust fumes of diesel engines may be the most strongly carcinogenic ever analysed, say Japanese researchers. They warn that a major source of the chemical is heavily loaded diesel engines, and that it could be partly responsible for the large number of lung cancer cases in cities.

    The compound, 3-nitrobenzanthrone, produced the highest score ever reported in an Ames test, a standard measure of the cancer-causing potential of toxic chemicals. “I personally believe that the recent increase in the number of lung cancer patients in vehicle-congested areas is closely linked with respirable carcinogens such as 3-nitrobenzanthrone,” says Hitomi Suzuki, a chemist at Kyoto University who led the study. Test emissions from truck engines and the air above central Tokyo both contained the compound”

    http: //www.newscientist.com/article/mg15621050.200

    Diesel Exhaust Kills Throat Cells, Study Shows

    “Researchers at Deakin University have found that diesel exhaust is far more damaging to our health than exhaust from biodiesel, the plant-based fuel.”

    “Our research found that the particulate matter from diesel exhaust stimulated a ‘death pathway’ response that the body uses to dispose of damaged cells. This response caused the airway cells to fuse together and die.

    “We saw hardly any cell death after treatment with biodiesel particulates”
    http: //www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070911092135.htm

    Bus workers file suit against diesel makers

    “”For 32 years, Connor Hartnett worked in bus depots throughout the city with little or no ventilation. Diesel fumes from hundreds of idling buses were so thick he often couldn’t read the identification numbers on the vehicles.

    “There were times you couldn’t see the buses,” said Hartnett, 73, who retired in 1992 and now has inoperable lung cancer and a heart condition.

    Yesterday, Hartnett and 17 others filed suit against diesel engine manufacturers, claiming that exposure to the particulate matter in the emissions caused their severe illnesses. Hartnett’s attorneys estimate that he was exposed for 42,960 hours during his time as a bus driver and shifter. Other in the case had more exposure, like mechanics Vincenzo Mancio and Joseph Ganz, who are now deceased from cancer and heart problems and are represented by family in the law suit.

    At the end of his shift Emidio DeStefano, 71, drove his bus into the back entrance of a depot he worked at for 20 years at 126th Street near the East River. He and the others then had to walk the length of the massive structure, some three blocks, to the other side. It was a slow walk because he often had to squeeze between the buses parked cheek by jowl. “There was no air whatsoever,” he said. He said they complained to supervisors but nothing was ever changed.

    Today he has throat cancer. All the doctors at the hospital ask him, how many packs a day do you smoke. “I never smoked in my life,” he said.”

    http: //web.archive.org/web/20090330173714/http://www.amny.com/news/local/transportation/am-bus0819,0,6550452.story

    Diesel–the Dark Side of Industry

    “On Thursday, industry representatives, environmentalists and scientists spent the day debating the link between diesel exhaust and lung cancer and the implications for California’s economy and public health.”
    “From truckers to farmers to manufacturers, industry leaders descended Thursday on the California Air Resources Board in an effort to stop the board from declaring diesel exhaust a potent cancer-causing danger to the public.”

    “Trucking companies and engine manufacturers worry that if the air board implicates diesel exhaust as a potent carcinogen, they could be held liable for paying massive damages for causing people’s cancers. Even without an outright ban on diesel, the air board’s decision would make it difficult to operate a wide variety of businesses that depend on the engines, from grocery stores to construction firms, industry officials say”

    “In April, the state’s Scientific Review Panel concluded that diesels could be killing more than 14,000 Californians by causing 450 lung cancers among every 1 million people exposed to average concentrations over a lifetime. Based on that risk estimate, diesel exhaust ranks sixth in potency of 19 air pollutants now identified as hazardous.

    More than 30 human health studies from around the world show a link between diesel exhaust and cancer–more so than with any other substance reviewed by the state in 15 years, said John Froines, a leading environmental health specialist at UCLA who heads the Scientific Review Panel. In the studies, railroad crews and other workers regularly exposed to large doses of the fumes suffered 40% more lung cancer than average.”

    http: //articles.latimes.com/1998/jul/31/news/mn-8918

    CONTROVERSY AT THE SECOND WORLD CONFERENCE on Smoking and Health 1971

    “AT ONE EXTREME were the people–mainly British–who pushed their way to open microphones’to say “I won’t let them poison my air,” and “If we’d been intended to smoke, we’d, have been given little chimneys.”

    “A fundamental principle” of ACS, said the Society'”s public information vice president, Irving Rimer, has always been that “smokers are people and most of them are very nice people and very responsible people”

    His comments, at the close of a session on `Control of Smoking at Places of Work, met little enthusiasm from an audience who two days before had tried to boo and clap down a physician who disagreed with the Royal College of Physicians report on smoking.

    He was trying to read an unscheduled paper on “‘The Cigarette — Enemy or Red Herring?” and it became obvious that he felt cigarettes were being used as a scapegoat for alleged dangers of diesel engine fumes.”

    http: //tobaccodocuments.org/lor/00622190-2193.html

    the Cigarette – Enemy or Red Herring?

    “The other theory is that the increase in lung cancer has been due to motor exhaust fumes; which are known to contain carcinogens, especially those of the diesel engine. I estimate roughly that the petrol engine is only about 6 % as dangerous as the diesel, and that if one adds.6 % of the petrol used to the diesel fuel consumed on the road’s in each year, one gets a graph of the huge rise in carcinogenic pollution of the atmosphere in Britain in the last 50 years .

    If the curve of the rise in male lung cancer mortality is plotted beside it, one can see that there is a close relationship between them.
    I believe that this correlation is more than mere coincidence.
    The diesel’ theory needs to be thoroughly investigated’ by a crash programme of research, and the cigarette theory needs to be checked and the figures on which it is based audited by independent statisticians.

    The cigarette theory has been used as a red herring to distract attention from the horrible pollution of the atmosphere by the diesel engine. all we’ve had up till now has been a flood of propaganda and the virtual suppression of all criticisim and discussion.

    I appeal to the Fellows of’the Royal College of Physicians to have the courage to support a fresh and unbiassed investigation.
    Somebody dies of lung cancer in England and Wales every 18 minutes. I believe that a complete mis-diagnosis of the cause of the increase in lung cancer has unfortunately been made, and that suffering humanity has the right to a second opinion.”
    http://tobaccodocuments.org/lor/00622096-2098.html

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    • Dr Kitty Little was of the same opinion concerning diesel particulates. And got about as much traction as your above examples, Rose. Once the anti-smoking juggernaut had been launched, its inertia was unstoppable. Mere facts just got steamrollered in its path. As has been said before, anti-smoking is more akin to religion than to science. Inconvenient truths just get brushed under the carpet.

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