Health: In the Name of Public Health

In the Name of “Public Health”

July 31, 2007
by Jacqueline S. Homan

In the rush to pound the public health pulpit, Antis would have the public at large in a panic over the “dangers” of ETS. Let us analyze a few real threats to public health that are not based on junk science and fuzzy math, and see how they stack up against ETS emitting from the cigarettes, cigars and pipes of 25% of the US population.

Train mishaps – Every 90 minutes, a train collides with car or other vehicle. In 1/3 of those cases, there was reduced visibility from foliage, no signal, no crossing gate or even a posted warning sing indicating the tracks as being active and still in use. The average 100 car freight train weighs 12 million pounds and can take up to 1 ? miles to stop from the moment the engineer applies the emergency brakes. In the remaining 2/3 of the railroad crossings that do have a signal and a crossing gate, drivers – it’s usually impatient commuters – think they can “beat” the train and break the law by attempting to circumvent the gate. Annually, between 1,800 and 3,200 deaths occur due to mishaps with a train.

A secondary public health hazard to train collisions with other vehicles is derailment, which can cause hazardous material in tanker cars being spilled. Since railroad companies have increased the number of crossing gates and signal devices, these deadly mishaps have been reduced recently, though not entirely eliminated. There is only so much government regulation can do; people cannot be saved from themselves.

Residential fires (not smoking related) – According to the National Fire Protection Association, the two leading causes for house fires each year is (1) cooking and; (2) winter heating. The majority of these fires occur between November and April. Since the price of heating fuel and energy has skyrocketed over the recent past two years, that number will probably increase as more low income Americans suffer utility shut-offs from being unable to afford to pay high fuel and energy bills and resort to alternative, and often unsafe, methods of cooking and staying warm in the winter months. Winter residential fires, excluding dormitory housing, has caused on average 3,000 deaths, 14,000 injuries and $5.5 billion in property loss per year for years 2000-2004. That’s approximately 0.001% of the total US population in fatalities, 0.0045% of the total US population in injuries. Being at risk for utility shut-offs puts approximately 0.0055% – roughly 17,000 people – at risk every year for injury and death.
Fires do not only injure and kill those in the burning structures; row home residents are affected by a neighbor’s fire. Firefighters are also injured and killed in the line of duty in responding to fires, too. Does residential heat and cooking related fires sound like a public health issue to you?

Lack of access to medical and dental care/Lack of health insurance – 18,314 Americans who are low income (have less than $25,000/year income) die each year because of being turned away for medical and dental care for treatable and manageable health problems that become intractable complications for lack of treatment. That’s 0.0061% of the total US population. I challenge anyone to tell me that the problem of 48 million Americans lacking health insurance and access to care as a result isn’t a public health issue.

Chemical spills – Each year approximately 300 deaths occur due to HAZMAT related spills in the US.

Food borne illness – Each year there are 76 million episodes of reported food-borne illness requiring 325,000 hospitalizations, resulting in 5000 deaths.? Isn’t this a public health issue?

HIV/AIDS – Each year, there are 40,000 new cases of HIV/AIDS reported in the US, and 10,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS. Since there is no cure for AIDS or HIV, it is safe to assume that those 40,000 new AIDS cases per year are 40,000 premature deaths, not counting the 10,000 existing deaths per annum from AIDS-related complications; which brings us to a total of 50,000 premature deaths per year – caused by a blood-borne disease. Isn’t AIDS a public health issue? Or is it getting the back-burner treatment by government because of the stigma it bears as being the bane of the lowest on society’s rungs: prostitutes and drug addicts? HIV/AIDS casualties affect 0.0166% of the total US population.

The Anti-smoker zealots thumping the “public health” argument have failed to prove that ETS is a serious enough of a public health issue to warrant draconian smoking bans which are making 28% of the total US population into second-class citizens. I have enumerated the total US deaths by only four categories. The total number combined of these fatalities is 36,414 per year and 379,000 injuries/illnesses. I have not included data from OSHA and the AFL-CIO on occupational injury/illness and deaths here. In the immortal words of Dave Hitt, I challenge the anti-smoker zealots to name three civilian casualties caused directly by ETS. I have named 36,414 fatalities, excluding occupational deaths. If we include OSHA data, it would increase those numbers. The antis have yet to prove absolutely that there are even so much as three fatalities caused by ETS. In sum, the emperor is butt naked.

Jacqueline S. Homan
Homan Insurance Agency
816 E. 26th Street Erie PA 16504
tel: (814) 452-4844
~serving PA & OH for auto, motorcycle, dwelling, flood and commercial insurance~

? Copyright 2007 The Smoker’s Club, Inc. Please repost with link back to this original article.