4 ms·

> Smoking in the center of cities on the street should be illegal (like it is in most of Australia), because it causes harm to complete strangers. I understand

by eric_h 8y ago

> Smoking in the center of cities on the street should be illegal (like it is in most of Australia), because it causes harm to complete strangers. I understand that secondhand smoke indoors is dangerous to others, but is there any real data on outdoor secondhand smoke? How does it compare to the liters of exhaust per minute from diesel engines in trucks passing by on those same streets? Perhaps more generally, at what ppm does second hand smoke start to have long term effects on unwitting participants, particularly compared to other major sources of toxins and their concentrations in an urban environment? [edit: to be clear I’m genuinely curious, not trying to dismiss it or whatabout it. I’ve always thought most second hand smoke issues could be solved with good ventilation (aimed at properly exhausting the smoke) and it seems to me that trace amounts from smokers you pass by on the street are a completely different situation from sitting next to someone smoking indoors]

pessimizer 8y ago
It's a neurotic fear of pollution and poisoning that is constantly reinforced instead of dismissed. Once you've convinced people that smoking is the most dangerous thing in the world, and they know that people smoke in order to get nicotine, it follows that any inadvertent inhalation of cigarette smoke is extremely dangerous, and that nicotine is the most deadly poison. The data on close-quarters constant second-hand smoke (working in bars, having a partner that smokes) is sketchy, the idea that passing someone while walking outside and momentarily catching a whiff of smoke a couple of dozen times a day is a public health crisis that requires immediate worldwide prohibition is absurd, but common. It's also a convenient piece of do-nothing legislation for local politicians to campaign on.
- eric_h 8y ago
  > The data on close-quarters constant second-hand smoke (working in bars, having a partner that smokes) is sketchy Okay, but the data on smoking is not sketchy at all, so it’s not a stretch to suggest that constant exposure to second hand smoke in a poorly ventilated environment is comparable to smoking. Unfortunately there’s no way to set up a classical controlled experiment to test that hypothesis ethically, so we have to make do with other experimental setups and data analysis. We do have studies that assess the affects of air pollution in cities, so surely we can come up with some way of extrapolating, no? > It's also a convenient piece of do-nothing legislation for local politicians to campaign on Sure - cigarette smoke does not smell good to non-smokers so it’s an easy win these days since most people don’t smoke. I’m just trying to come up with a way of legislating these things based on our best abilities to make conclusions based on data rather than feelings, but I feel as though the onslaught of information brought about by the internet is making it harder to disseminate the wheat while more disseminate the chaff. Not to mention all the ways one can make feelings look like data.
  - cyphar 8y ago
    There is a lot of evidence that second-hand smoking is harmful. [1] is a summary on this topic from 2006 and cites 194 papers. To describe the science on second-hand smoking to be anything other than solid is to simply lie about our knowledge on the health effects of smoking. To add to this, there is also significant evidence that SIDS is strongly correlated with parents who are smokers (and thus appears to be likely caused by smoking while pregnant, and second-hand smoke during infancy). [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44330/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44330/
- cyphar 8y ago
  > it follows that any inadvertent inhalation of cigarette smoke is extremely dangerous, and that nicotine is the most deadly poison. Nicotine isn't what most people are worried about, and presenting it this way is simply disingenuous. Tobacco smoke contains many other components than nicotine such as cyanide, benzene, arsenic, as well as 50 other known carcinogens. Literally nobody cares about your nicotine addiction, it's all of the other toxic components that are the problem. The studies on second-hand smoking are very solid, and your calling them sketchy is very close to being an outright lie. Here is a summary of the many studies (dating back to the 80s) that all show the various impacts of second-hand smoking[1] -- it cites 194 papers. The WHO, CDC, American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, and many other groups (from other countries too) all concur that second-hand smoke is a very significant threat to the public's health. Second-hand smoke is very likely one of the causes of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) for fucks' sake. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44330/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44330/
cyphar 8y ago
To clarify, there are two laws about this. There is a specific law (I'm not sure if it's just in NSW or if it's nation-wide) about not being allowed to smoke within 4 meters of an exit to a building (because smokers tended to smoke right outside a building -- presumably because it's more convenient -- when indoor smoking became illegal). A large cluster of people smoking in front of a doorway is not much better than those same people just smoking in the lobby (and people who need to enter the building can't really avoid it). There are other laws about smoke-free areas (my university campus is one of them). As a non-smoker I do appreciate this quite a bit (having lived in a country where smoking in public areas and indoors was very common), but I'm not sure about whether it is actually a significant improvement for non-smokers. The city's image is probably just as significant a motivator for such rules. Regarding data, I did a quick Google search and found some articles[1,2,3] ranging in dates to 2007. I've only skimmed them, but one of them[1] specifically mentions doing comparison to pollution from cars. [1]: http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/early/2016/05/26/13993003.00064-2016 http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/early/2016/05/26/13993003... [2]: https://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/may9/smoking-050907.html https://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/may9/smoking-050907.html [3]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091118154619.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091118154619.h...

by eric_h 8y ago

pessimizer 8y ago

It's a neurotic fear of pollution and poisoning that is constantly reinforced instead of dismissed. Once you've convinced people that smoking is the most dangerous thing in the world, and they know that people smoke in order to get nicotine, it follows that any inadvertent inhalation of cigarette smoke is extremely dangerous, and that nicotine is the most deadly poison. The data on close-quarters constant second-hand smoke (working in bars, having a partner that smokes) is sketchy, the idea that passing someone while walking outside and momentarily catching a whiff of smoke a couple of dozen times a day is a public health crisis that requires immediate worldwide prohibition is absurd, but common. It's also a convenient piece of do-nothing legislation for local politicians to campaign on.

eric_h 8y ago
> The data on close-quarters constant second-hand smoke (working in bars, having a partner that smokes) is sketchy Okay, but the data on smoking is not sketchy at all, so it’s not a stretch to suggest that constant exposure to second hand smoke in a poorly ventilated environment is comparable to smoking. Unfortunately there’s no way to set up a classical controlled experiment to test that hypothesis ethically, so we have to make do with other experimental setups and data analysis. We do have studies that assess the affects of air pollution in cities, so surely we can come up with some way of extrapolating, no? > It's also a convenient piece of do-nothing legislation for local politicians to campaign on Sure - cigarette smoke does not smell good to non-smokers so it’s an easy win these days since most people don’t smoke. I’m just trying to come up with a way of legislating these things based on our best abilities to make conclusions based on data rather than feelings, but I feel as though the onslaught of information brought about by the internet is making it harder to disseminate the wheat while more disseminate the chaff. Not to mention all the ways one can make feelings look like data.
- cyphar 8y ago
  There is a lot of evidence that second-hand smoking is harmful. [1] is a summary on this topic from 2006 and cites 194 papers. To describe the science on second-hand smoking to be anything other than solid is to simply lie about our knowledge on the health effects of smoking. To add to this, there is also significant evidence that SIDS is strongly correlated with parents who are smokers (and thus appears to be likely caused by smoking while pregnant, and second-hand smoke during infancy). [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44330/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44330/
cyphar 8y ago
> it follows that any inadvertent inhalation of cigarette smoke is extremely dangerous, and that nicotine is the most deadly poison. Nicotine isn't what most people are worried about, and presenting it this way is simply disingenuous. Tobacco smoke contains many other components than nicotine such as cyanide, benzene, arsenic, as well as 50 other known carcinogens. Literally nobody cares about your nicotine addiction, it's all of the other toxic components that are the problem. The studies on second-hand smoking are very solid, and your calling them sketchy is very close to being an outright lie. Here is a summary of the many studies (dating back to the 80s) that all show the various impacts of second-hand smoking[1] -- it cites 194 papers. The WHO, CDC, American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, and many other groups (from other countries too) all concur that second-hand smoke is a very significant threat to the public's health. Second-hand smoke is very likely one of the causes of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) for fucks' sake. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44330/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44330/

cyphar 8y ago

To clarify, there are two laws about this. There is a specific law (I'm not sure if it's just in NSW or if it's nation-wide) about not being allowed to smoke within 4 meters of an exit to a building (because smokers tended to smoke right outside a building -- presumably because it's more convenient -- when indoor smoking became illegal). A large cluster of people smoking in front of a doorway is not much better than those same people just smoking in the lobby (and people who need to enter the building can't really avoid it). There are other laws about smoke-free areas (my university campus is one of them). As a non-smoker I do appreciate this quite a bit (having lived in a country where smoking in public areas and indoors was very common), but I'm not sure about whether it is actually a significant improvement for non-smokers. The city's image is probably just as significant a motivator for such rules. Regarding data, I did a quick Google search and found some articles[1,2,3] ranging in dates to 2007. I've only skimmed them, but one of them[1] specifically mentions doing comparison to pollution from cars. [1]: http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/early/2016/05/26/13993003.00064-2016 http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/early/2016/05/26/13993003... [2]: https://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/may9/smoking-050907.html https://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/may9/smoking-050907.html [3]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091118154619.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091118154619.h...