Many people think asthma isn't a very serious condition. Think again.
An acute asthma attack can often be a life-threating event. Believe me, it happens more often than you may think. One day you're talking to someone with asthma like they're the picture of health, and the next day they're gone. JUST - LIKE - THAT.
Asthma is a very serious condition, one that can be precipitated by secondhand smoke.
How would you feel about yourself if your secondhand smoke led to someone else having a serious asthma attack? Just something to think about before you light up in the presence of others.
Source: CDC: Secondhand Smoke
Odd, then, that as smoking rates (and thus by extension, exposure to SHS)have fallen, childhood asthma has been increasing, to the point where it is almost endemic. Perhaps you should have a look at this:
ReplyDeletehttp://daveatherton.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/smoking-asthma-and-atopy/
In my personal experience, it is rare that asthma is adversely affected by tobacco smoke. Indeed, a very old friend of mine, an asthmatic all his life, gave up smoking about 15 years ago, and the frequency and severity of his attacks increased massively. It was his doctor, in fact, who suggested that if he take up smoking again his situation might improve. He did start smoking again, and his asthma did become a lot less severe - back to the level of before he quit, which was relatively mild.
Perhaps you should find something more grounded in fact with which to frighten the less educated of your readers.
Tobacco Tactics.org aims to provide up-to-date information on the Tobacco Industry, its allies or those promoting a pro-tobacco agenda.
ReplyDeleteAnother anti-smoking Nazi. Just go and do something useful with your life - if you have one that is!
ReplyDeleteCole Durkee, throughout all of my grade school, high school, college, and graduate career, despite those being in a relatively smoky period of history, I only met two people who had asthmatic reactions to smoke. For both of them the reactions only occurred in unusually smoky conditions (which, in those days, were VERY smoky) and only in one of them were the reactions at all serious (although not serious enough to require medical attention.)
ReplyDeleteWhat's changed in the last 25 years? General smoke exposure has gone way down, and neurotic fixations and fears about smoking, produced by people such as yourself, have increased exponentially. And so today we have MANY people who are emotionally reacting to the scent or even the SIGHT of someone smoking and being driven to quite real, and potentially threatening, asthma attacks.
It is YOU, and your fellow Antismokers Mr Durkee, who have created this problem. So I would paraphrase your final paragraph to read as follows:
"How would you feel about yourself if your proselytizing led to someone else having a serious asthma attack? Just something to think about before you write these sorts of things on a blog that will affect other people's lives."
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
Actually the science now says that your average garden BBQ is far more 'toxic' than the zero point zero zero whatever percent of harm that SHS might (and that's a struggle-to-keep-our-funding 'might') cause.
ReplyDeleteHow would you feel about yourself if your BBQ smoke led to someone else having a serious asthma attack? Just something to think about before you slap another lemon grass and garlic infused Jamie Oliver Tofu burger on the barbie...
My 14 year old nephew has suffered from asthma since birth (non smoking parents)
ReplyDeleteHe has recently started smoking as have most of his classmates, and has not had an asthma attack since then.
Work that one out.
The inconvenient truth is that the only studies of children of smokers suggest it is PROTECTIVE in contracting atopy in the first place. The New Zealand study says by a staggering factor of 82%.
ReplyDelete“Participants with atopic parents were also less likely to have positive SPTs between ages 13 and 32 years if they smoked themselves (OR=0.18), and this reduction in risk remained significant after adjusting for confounders.
The authors write: “We found that children who were exposed to parental smoking and those who took up cigarette smoking themselves had a lower incidence of atopy to a range of common inhaled allergens.
“These associations were found only in those with a parental history of asthma or hay fever.”
They conclude: Our findings suggest that preventing allergic sensitization is not one of them.”
The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
Volume 121, Issue 1 , Pages 38-42.e3, January 2008
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S00...(07)01954-9/abstract
.
This is a Swedish study.
“Children of mothers who smoked at least 15 cigarettes a day tended to have lower odds for suffering from allergic rhino-conjunctivitis, allergic asthma, atopic eczema and food allergy, compared to children of mothers who had never smoked (ORs 0.6-0.7)
CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates an association between current exposure to tobacco smoke and a low risk for atopic disorders in smokers themselves and a similar tendency in their children.”
Clin Exp Allergy 2001 Jun;31(6):908-14
http://www.data-yard.net/30/asthma.htm
...
If you’re afraid of second-hand smoke, you should also avoid cars, restaurants…and don’t even think of barbecuing.
ReplyDeletehere are just some of the chemicals present in tobacco smoke and what else contains them:
Arsenic, Benzine, Formaldehyde.
Arsenic- 8 glasses of water = 200 cigarettes worth of arsenic
Benzine- Grilling of one burger = 250 cigarettes
Formaldehyde – cooking a vegetarian meal = 100 cigarettes
When you drink your 8 glasses of tap water (64 ounces) a day, you're safely drinking up to 18,000 ng of arsenic by government safety standards of 10 nanograms/gram (10 ng/gm = 18,000ng/64oz) for daily consumption.
Am I "poisoning" you with the arsenic from my cigarette smoke? Actually, with the average cigarette putting out 32 ng of arsenic into the air which is then diluted by normal room ventilation for an individual exposure of .032 ng/hour, you would have to hang out in a smoky bar for literally 660,000 hours every day (yeah, a bit hard, right?) to get the same dose of arsenic that the government tells you is safe to drink.
So you can see why claims that smokers are "poisoning" people are simply silly.
You can stay at home all day long if you don’t want all those “deadly” chemicals around you, but in fact, those alleged 4000-7000 theorized chemicals in cigarettes are present in many foods, paints etc. in much larger quantities. And as they are present in cigarettes in very small doses, they are harmless. Sorry, no matter how much you like the notion of harmful ETS, it’s a myth.
Cole Durkee, somehow you seem to have missed my query to you above, so for your convenience, since I know you wouldn't want to appear to be ducking it:
ReplyDelete==
Today we have MANY people who are emotionally reacting to the scent or even the SIGHT of someone smoking and being driven to quite real, and potentially threatening, asthma attacks.
It is YOU, and your fellow Antismokers Mr Durkee, who have created this problem. So I would paraphrase your final paragraph to read as follows:
"How would you feel about yourself if your proselytizing led to someone else having a serious asthma attack? Just something to think about before you write these sorts of things on a blog that will affect other people's lives."
- MJM
To Anonymous with the nephew: The cited NZ study addresses that issue very directly. While I'm sure it could be argued that taking up smoking is not the best health choice for a teenager, it DOES appear that it might sometimes or even often reduce their problems with asthma -- at least according to the findings of that study (which I have not seen contradicted yet.)
ReplyDelete- MJM
In 2008 this paper was produced in America and concludes that nictotine and hence active smoking and passive smoking leads to less asthma. It also gives the aetiology (causation) why nicotine and the biologial process that reduces asthma in recipients.
ReplyDeleteThe results unequivocally show that, even after multiple allergen sensitizations, nicotine dramatically suppresses inflammatory/allergic parameters in the lung including the following: eosinophilic/lymphocytic emigration; mRNA and/or protein expression of the Th2 cytokines/chemokines IL-4, IL-5, IL-13, IL-25, and eotaxin; leukotriene C4; and total as well as allergen-specific IgE. unequivocally show that, even after multiple allergen sensitizations, nicotine dramatically suppresses inflammatory/allergic parameters in the lung including the following: eosinophilic/lymphocytic emigration; mRNA and/or protein expression of the Th2 cytokines/chemokines IL-4, IL-5, IL-13, IL-25, and eotaxin; leukotriene C4; and total as well as allergen-specific IgE. ”
http://www.jimmunol.org/cgi/content/a...
...
Here's a great documentary from Americans for Nonsmokers Rights. It'll really clue you in on how the tobacco industry and their supporters feed MIS-information to the public, try to convince us to believe their pro-smoking bullshit, and shows how they declare war on anti-tobacco organizations or those opposed to smoking.
ReplyDeleteThe Hidden War: Part One
The Hidden War: Part Two
The Hidden War: Part Three