There is no such thing as perfectly clear air…
Times Writers Group: Smoking bans are about policy, not about facts
By Barbara Banaian
July 06. 2007
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Secondhand smoke is a byproduct of cigarette smoking, a mixture of particulates and gases. While proponents of Minnesota’s smoking ban have pushed the science of smoking, it is based on facts not in evidence that the science on secondhand smoke is mixed, so much that the federal government declines to impose any standard on secondhand smoke.
July 06. 2007
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Secondhand smoke is a byproduct of cigarette smoking, a mixture of particulates and gases. While proponents of Minnesota’s smoking ban have pushed the science of smoking, it is based on facts not in evidence that the science on secondhand smoke is mixed, so much that the federal government declines to impose any standard on secondhand smoke.
There is no such thing as perfectly clear air — there has to be trade-offs made over how many contaminants are acceptable. That is why the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration focuses on Permissible Exposure Levels for measurable chemicals in secondhand smoke. While secondhand smoke has 40 alleged carcinogens, coffee has at least 1,000 chemicals, at least 19 of which are toxic to rats. Although rats are cute, I do not think I care what causes cancer in rats.
What dosage?
An issue in any toxicology study is how exposure of the carcinogen to the animal correlates to exposure for humans. How do you scale up the dosage? Carcinogens do not work in a linear fashion; some exposure may have zero effect on health, while a little more than that might be fatal.
Of the carcinogens in secondhand smoke, most require exposure levels that are far in excess of what anyone would face. In 1997, OSHA officials published a memo that stated, “Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions the component in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing PELs. … It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.”
It simply isn’t clear that secondhand smoke at the levels a restaurant worker would experience is dangerous.
Science is usually much more guarded in its evaluation than public policy is. The lawmaker needs to draw clear lines to permit enforcement in the laws he makes.
The scientist understands the gray area. The law cannot.
Such evidence was an effective check on efforts to use workplace safety as a rationale for smoking bans. It led smoking opponents to try to get OSHA out of the business of regulating workplace exposure to secondhand smoke. While OSHA does not regulate secondhand smoke as a whole, it does regulate exposure to levels of some chemicals common to that smoke.
John Banzhaf, founder and president of Action on Smoking and Health, which wants bans, decided that his cause would gain more momentum without OSHA’s regulation: We might now be even more successful in persuading states and localities to ban smoking on their own, once they no longer have OSHA rule-making to hide behind.”
Double standards
Examples abound of the capricious standards. Minnesota law already recognizes this in that it has different exposure levels. For example, for in-home child care providers smoking is permitted in the evening. Certainly, some of the particulates linger.
But the law knows that to impose stricter limits would remove too many child care providers from the marketplace. Working parents would protest, so the state accepts some amount of secondhand smoke.
What would be the acceptable limits for restaurant workers? Should it be less or more than we allow for children in day care centers?
Some employers have already banned smokers from their businesses. There may be good reasons for this. Smokers might be less-efficient workers. Smokers may have greater absenteeism. Smokers might drive up the costs of employer-provided health care.
These business owners may be wrong, but it is their own private property and they bear the cost of their decision.
When you bear all of the costs and receive all the benefits, you tend to do your own research and you tend to make the right decisions. When you get it wrong, it’s you who pays.
If the government makes a mistake on the science, they don’t bear the cost. In this case, the businesses do.
This is the opinion of Barbara Banaian, a professional pianist who lives in the St. Cloud area. Her column is published the first Friday of the month.
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