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News :: Children : Civil & Human Rights : Elections & Legislation : Health : Labor : Political-Economy : Urban Development |
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Surgeon General Warns of Secondhand Smoke |
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by John O'Neil
(No verified email address) |
27 Jun 2006
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While it won't settle things for a few die-hard know-nothings, the US Surgeon General's latest warning on the linkage between second-hand tobacco smoke and damage to health should put to rest any arguments to the contrary that recently passed smoking bans in Champaign and Urbana are necessary. |
Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona declared today that the evidence is now "indisputable" that secondhand smoke is an "alarming" public health hazard, and warned that measures like no-smoking sections don't provide adequate protection.
"Smoke-free environments are the only approach that protects nonsmokers from the dangers of secondhand smoke," he said.
Dr. Carmona did not call for a federal ban on smoking in workplaces, bars and restaurants, as a growing number of cities and states have done. He said he saw his role as providing the American people and Congress with definitive information on the subject.
"We hope that they will make the right decision on behalf of their constituents," Dr. Carmona said.
Smoking bans have often been bitterly resisted by business owners worried about losing customers and by groups skeptical about the dangers posed by secondhand smoke. But Dr. Carmona today said that "overwhelming" evidence showed that secondhand smoke is responsible for "tens of thousands" of premature deaths from heart disease and cancer among nonsmokers each year.
"I am here to say the debate is over: the science is clear," Dr. Carmona said at a televised news conference this morning, at which he released a report updating the original surgeon general's study of secondhand smoke in 1986.
In the years since then, hundreds of studies have indicated that the harm caused by secondhand smoke is far greater than earlier believed, he said. The report's findings include the following:
* There is no safe level of secondhand smoke, and even brief exposure can cause harm, especially for people already suffering from heart or respiratory diseases.
* For nonsmoking adults, exposure raises the risk of heart disease by 25 to 30 percent and of cancer by 20 to 30 percent, and accounted for an estimated 46,000 premature deaths from heart disease and 3,000 premature deaths from cancer last year.
* Secondhand smoke is a cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, accounting for an estimated 430 deaths last year. The risk is elevated both for children whose mothers were exposed during pregnancy and for children exposed in their homes after birth.
* The impact on the health and development of children is more severe than previously thought. "Children are especially vulnerable to the poisons in secondhand smoke," Dr. Carmona said.
* Efforts to minimize the effect of secondhand smoke by separating smokers and nonsmokers are ineffective, as are ventilation systems meant to remove smoke from a shared space.
* While exposure has declined, as many as 60 percent of nonsmokers show biological evidence of encountering secondhand smoke, and an estimated 22 percent of children are exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes.
Studies conducted by the Centers for Disease Control show that great progress has been made in reducing exposure, Dr. Carmona said. The amount of cotinine — the form nicotine takes after being metabolized — fell by 75 percent among adults, when samples taken between 1999 and 2002 were compared with samples taken a decade earlier.
But Dr. Carmona said more needed to be done, particularly to protect children.
He urged parents who smoke not only to quit, but to move their smoking outside while they are trying to quit. "Make the home a smoke-free environment," he said.
Dr. Cheryl G. Healton, the president and chief executive of the American Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit group created to use settlement money from tobacco companies to educate young people about the dangers of tobacco, called the report "groundbreaking" even though much of its information had been published in journal articles previously. Bringing it all together creates a persuasive case for smoking bans, she said.
But she said that many tobacco advocates would be hesitant about using it as a springboard to push for federal legislation creating smoke-free environments like those that have been adopted in many other countries and throughout most of Western Europe.
"The risk of approaching it nationally in this country is the extreme lobbying power that the tobacco industry has on the Hill," she said, and any national bill able to pass would likely be weaker than the bans adopted by municipalities.
The report issued today also went beyond the 1986 study by finding that evidence suggests possible links between secondhand smoking and some other cancers, including breast cancer, childhood cancer and nasal sinus cancer. It found no link to cervical cancer.
Earlier this year, the California Environmental Protection Agency issued a report that concluded that exposure to secondhand smoke was a cause of breast cancer.
The surgeon general's report also found a link between exposure to secondhand smoke by pregnant women and low birth weights for their children, and said that evidence suggests a possible link to premature delivery .
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com |
See also:
http://www.ucimc.org/feature/display/114940/index.php
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