4 ms·

> Spoken like a dude who's never lived in a place with air inversions. Right: I have no idea just what that is! Generally I like the NIH, but I would not be

> Spoken like a dude who's never lived in a place with air inversions. Right: I have no idea just what that is! Generally I like the NIH, but I would not be the least bit worried about the increased probability of cancer in actual, real life from an NIH study of common smoke from a fire used to cook some food or heat a house. (1) That study would be too tough to do with much accuracy, e.g., too difficult to get good data. (2) Maybe they got some smoke, let it condense, painted it on the skin of some mice, and checked for early signs of cancer. Gee, if I become a mouse, then I will be careful not to paint smoke goo on my bare skin and leave it there for weeks. (3) Maybe they analyzed some of the chemicals in some smoke, just in a little glass dish in their lab tested the chemicals for being mutagenic, and then made the leap that this means carcinogenic. I just noticed at Google that the WHO (World Health Organization) believes that "processed meats" are carcinogenic -- guess I should not put pepperoni sausage on my pizza and should throw away my hot dogs and my Italian sausage. Gee, what about BBQ cooked in a smoker? What about the old practice of preserving fresh meat in a "smoke house" -- assume the meat is sterile on the inside and with the smoke make it also sterile on the outside. If not smoke, then salt. You don't really believe that NIH stuff??

bigbillheck 4y ago
Instead of making up hypotheses based on 20th century urban legends, you could have spent thirty seconds reading the abstract which tells you what they actually did: Methods Using questionnaire data, we classified subjects as predominant solid-fuel users (e.g., coal, wood) or nonsolid-fuel users (e.g., oil, gas, electricity). Unconditional logistic regression was used to estimate the odds ratios (ORs) and to compute 95% confidence intervals (CIs), adjusting for age, sex, education, smoking status, race/ethnicity, and study center. Results Compared with nonsolid-fuel users, predominant coal users (OR = 1.64; 95% CI, 1.49–1.81), particularly coal users in Asia (OR = 4.93; 95% CI, 3.73–6.52), and predominant wood users in North American and European countries (OR = 1.21; 95% CI, 1.06–1.38) experienced higher risk of lung cancer. The results were similar in never-smoking women and other subgroups. > You don't really believe that NIH stuff?? I don't disbelieve it. We already know that long-term exposure to other kinds of smoke causes lung cancer and other health problems, what's special about wood smoke?
- graycat 4y ago
  Good grief! Logistic regression! Back when I was studying such things and saw that it looked fishy and I tried to forget it and was fairly successful! For just regression, there are some supporting arguments, even with minimal assumptions. For logistic regression? Apparently they controlled on lots of variables -- commonly that is fishy and tends to need a lot, too much, data. For data they had (5,105 cases and 6,535 controls) Good grief! From the NIH reference you gave, "... Globally, lung cancer is estimated to account for almost 1.4 million incident cases of cancer each year and has been the most common cancer in the world for more than two decades (Parkin et al. 2005). " Good grief. All of this is only because I typed in "Smoke from a wood fire? Ah, smells like home at Thanksgiving or Christmas!" It still does! Hmm, maybe there will be a movement to outlaw new fireplaces and to brick up old ones! Uh, at the beginning of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6bRBQL_j6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6bRBQL_j6o of a guy posting video clips of his work on building post frame building, there is a picture of his huge living room with his little wood burning furnace and its tall smokestack rising to the outside. Such furnaces tend to try to be nearly air tight, but likely there will be enough smoke in the house to smell like Thanksgiving or Christmas! Then the main smoke does go outside -- hmm, maybe all of Iowa will be afraid???

bigbillheck 4y ago

Instead of making up hypotheses based on 20th century urban legends, you could have spent thirty seconds reading the abstract which tells you what they actually did: Methods Using questionnaire data, we classified subjects as predominant solid-fuel users (e.g., coal, wood) or nonsolid-fuel users (e.g., oil, gas, electricity). Unconditional logistic regression was used to estimate the odds ratios (ORs) and to compute 95% confidence intervals (CIs), adjusting for age, sex, education, smoking status, race/ethnicity, and study center. Results Compared with nonsolid-fuel users, predominant coal users (OR = 1.64; 95% CI, 1.49–1.81), particularly coal users in Asia (OR = 4.93; 95% CI, 3.73–6.52), and predominant wood users in North American and European countries (OR = 1.21; 95% CI, 1.06–1.38) experienced higher risk of lung cancer. The results were similar in never-smoking women and other subgroups. > You don't really believe that NIH stuff?? I don't disbelieve it. We already know that long-term exposure to other kinds of smoke causes lung cancer and other health problems, what's special about wood smoke?

graycat 4y ago
Good grief! Logistic regression! Back when I was studying such things and saw that it looked fishy and I tried to forget it and was fairly successful! For just regression, there are some supporting arguments, even with minimal assumptions. For logistic regression? Apparently they controlled on lots of variables -- commonly that is fishy and tends to need a lot, too much, data. For data they had (5,105 cases and 6,535 controls) Good grief! From the NIH reference you gave, "... Globally, lung cancer is estimated to account for almost 1.4 million incident cases of cancer each year and has been the most common cancer in the world for more than two decades (Parkin et al. 2005). " Good grief. All of this is only because I typed in "Smoke from a wood fire? Ah, smells like home at Thanksgiving or Christmas!" It still does! Hmm, maybe there will be a movement to outlaw new fireplaces and to brick up old ones! Uh, at the beginning of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6bRBQL_j6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6bRBQL_j6o of a guy posting video clips of his work on building post frame building, there is a picture of his huge living room with his little wood burning furnace and its tall smokestack rising to the outside. Such furnaces tend to try to be nearly air tight, but likely there will be enough smoke in the house to smell like Thanksgiving or Christmas! Then the main smoke does go outside -- hmm, maybe all of Iowa will be afraid???