Wednesday, November 27, 1996
By Suzanne Karpilovsky
Daily Bruin ContributorLast spring, tobacco company Philip
Morris published an advertisement in several European newspapers
claiming that secondhand smoke is far less carcinogenic than other
daily activities such as "drinking milk, eating pepper or drinking
tap water," according to the full page advertisement.
Quickly met with criticism and soon pulled from newspapers, the
controversial ad was just one of a new series of studies that
claims secondhand smoke is not nearly as harmful as previously was
thought.
Recent United States legislation reflects opposition toward
secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke. Last
year, laws were passed in the cities of Los Angeles and New York
prohibiting smoking in public places such as restaurants and
workplaces, and California has in the works a law which would ban
smoking in all bars, taverns and lounges.
Barbara Berman, adjunct assistant professor at the UCLA Jonsson
Comprehensive Cancer Center, believes the government is justified
in implementing anti-smoking legislation.
She cautions against placing too much weight on the recent
scientific findings of tobacco companies.
"If it were up to the tobacco industry, we’d still be trying to
show a connection between smoking and negative health effects, let
alone secondhand smoke," Berman said.
Echoing Berman’s doubt regarding the credibility of the tobacco
companies is the recent discovery of a 1981 Philip Morris memo in
which teenagers were referred to as "tomorrow’s potential regular
customer."
In the memo, efforts were urged to know "as much as possible
about teenage smoking patterns and attitudes." The memo was
retrieved just months after Philip Morris invested millions of
dollars in nationwide advertising decreeing that teenagers should
not smoke.
The Environmental Protection Agency warns that the health risks
associated with smoking affect the entire public, not just the
teenage segment of the population.
According to the EPA, second-hand smoke is a Class A carcinogen,
the same label given
to asbestos. Armed with data from over 50 studies collected over
a period of 20 years, the EPA has determined that secondhand smoke
is responsible for over 3,000 deaths annually in U.S.
nonsmokers.
"They (EPA officials) estimate that nationally, 3,000 American
nonsmokers die annually of lung cancer and an additional 35,000 to
40,000 nonsmokers die of secondhand smoke-related heart disease,"
said Nancy Soaoler, program specialist at the American Cancer
Society.
The Journal of the American Medical Association concurs with the
EPA’s findings, and reports that the carbon monoxide in passive
smoke reduces the blood’s ability to deliver oxygen to the heart
and the heart’s subsequent ability to fully utilize the oxygen. Its
findings reveal that the impact of secondhand smoke is noticeable
after only 20 minutes.
Not true, argues Joe Dawson, a software engineer and smoker who
has done extensive research on the effects of passive smoking.
Dawson reasons that environmental tobacco smoke is too dilute to
affect the body in a normal human lifetime.
He maintains that since it takes 20 years or more for damage to
manifest itself in a smoker, "nonsmokers would have to live with
environmental tobacco smoke for upwards of 2,000 years to incur the
same damage."
Still others contend that secondhand smoke is no worse than
exposure to any other carcinogenic air pollutants. David Carpenter
Rios, director of operations at the Cigar Joint in Westwood,
believes anti-smoking laws are an infringement on personal freedom,
and he questions the recent uproar regarding the impact of
secondhand smoke.
Carpenter-Rios asserts, "When people stop driving cars with
internal combustion engines, which belch out lead-based toxins,
sulfur-based toxins, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, then I’ll
start to listen to their complaints about secondhand smoke."
To complicate matters further, the credibility of the EPA is now
at stake. The Congressional Research Service has questioned the
scientific validity of the EPA’s conclusions, and finds fault with
its premise that there are absolutely no safe levels of exposure to
secondhand smoke.
The EPA has also been taken to court in California regarding
claims that the agency destroyed certain research material that did
not reflect final policy decision.
One of the errors in the EPA’s statistic of the annual death
rate from secondhand smoke is that of the 3,000 people who will die
each year of secondhand smoke, 1,000 of them are former
smokers.
Scientist P.N. Lee argues that only never-smokers should be
included in the statistic, as the chances of getting lung cancer
for once-smokers is still 14 times higher than for nonsmokers.
Thus, Lee contends the EPA’s projected mortality rate should be
reduced by one third.
The carcinogenicity of secondhand smoke is definitely not an
open-and-shut case, as evidenced by attacks on the reliability of
both the tobacco companies and the EPA. In the meantime, the issue
boils down to a matter of respect for most.
Before she lights up, Maya Cashman, a third-year fine arts
student, always tries to ask people near her if they mind her
smoking. Often people are surprised to be given such consideration,
Cashman says.
However, Cashman sees it more as an issue of common decency than
special courtesy.
"I try to respect other people," Cashman says. "If you smoke
around a child, they don’t have a choice but to inhale."