CRITIQUE of
REPORT ON THE HEALTH EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL TOBACCO SMOKE (ETS) IN THE WORKPLACE

Forces International

Download the report object of this critique

Back to main page

A typical example of "political science" at the service of "Public Health"

May 9, 2003 - This report is not dissimilar from the endless list of others that are part of the “mountain of evidence” about passive smoke all over the world. In fact, it is an exquisitely typical, roundabout paper that takes hypotheses as facts, and builds a rationale on them –  to justify the adoption of smoking bans and the violation of private commercial property. What follows applies not just to the report being examined, but to thousands of others – and also to many more "dangers" to public health, constantly mass-produced by the industry of fear to feed opportunistic "scientists" of questionable ethics, and an ever-growing army of bureaucrats who have nothing in mind but our "protection" –  and their positions of power, and pay cheques.

The report calls "persuasive" a 20-30% relative risk elevation, and then it proceeds from there as if that insignificant percentage were proof of causality; it considers ventilation options – just as cosmetic dressing to demonstrate that there is no safe exposure to ETS, where infinitesimal amounts of toxics are portrayed to be so dangerous that only a "storm" could remove them, thus making ventilation impractical – and thus it must follow that the only feasible way is banning smoking completely. About ventilation, it is stated that, “Of proposed new technology, displacement ventilation is viewed as having the potential for a 90% reduction in ETS levels but even this would still leave exposure levels 1,500 to 2,500 times the acceptable risk level for hazardous air pollutants” – but no reference to such “acceptable” level is provided, perhaps expecting that the scientific reader makes a leap of faith in the good will and disinterest of the authors. Incidentally, that statement is in stark contradiction with previous direct measurements of ETS pollutants, which clearly demonstrate that, in order to pass the threshold of safe toxic exposure, quantities ranging from 1,170 to 1,000,000 cigarettes must be smoked in a sealed room of 100 m³ .

The report then uses the presence of cotinine (a harmless compound) in people as a marker for exposure, thus “demonstrating” that there is indeed exposure (we knew that without the need of any study), providing a vast list of the ETS components, but still failing to provide substantial evidence in any way, shape or form that the exposure to the infinitesimal quantities of those components causes harm. Nevertheless, the study proceeds building on the hypothesis that ETS is harmful no matter what,  enumerating impressive-looking lists of other studies and charts of studies as reference and evidence. Those lists, however, totally ignore any and all studies that found no association with disease, or those did not reach statistical significance (that is, the overwhelming majority of them) making this report – and many of the same kind – a mockery of scientific methodology, a monument to intellectual dishonesty, and broaching serious concerns about the ethics of contemporary “public health”. The studies that have been ignored, in fact, do not serve the purpose of the paper, which is to provide a pseudo-scientific justification for the political banning of public smoking on grounds that are disguised as "public health."

Moreover, this report totally ignores two fundamental scientific points – further confirming the hypothesis that this study is not to establish whether ETS is harmful, but to convince the reader that banning smoking in public is the only sensible way to preserve public health:

1. The basic principle of toxicology: "Mere exposure does not equate to toxicity; it is the dose that makes the poison";

2. The existence of thresholds of toxic exposure.

Rather, the report makes sweeping statements such as "The evidence is highly persuasive of a causal relationship between ETS in the workplace and lung cancer". But there is not even modestly persuasive causal relationship between ETS in the workplace and lung cancer. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]} That statement may indeed appeal to emotions and sensationalism –  a trick that obviously works –  but it provides no causality whatsoever. In fact, in the text of the report there is the usual, vast constellation of "may" (mentioned 41 times in the document), "possible" and "possibly" (22 times), "suggests" and "suggestive" (12 times), "could" (12 times), "should" (applied 11 times to evidence), and so on. Such terminology is highly representative of the solidity of the “mountain of evidence” against passive smoke throughout the history of this public health fraud.

Indeed the authors may not have any direct vested interest with pharmaceutical or tobacco industries as they claim in the document –  but the study has been commissioned by the “Health and Safety Authority and the Office of Tobacco Control, Ireland, to identify and report on the degree of consensus that exists among leading international scientific authorities on the question of the hazard and risk posed by environmental tobacco smoke to human health in the workplace”.  Two considerations come to mind:
 

• Firstly, the entity footing the bill for the report is called “Tobacco Control,” which leaves very little doubt about the leanings of such an entity on the tobacco issue – hardly a neutral party –  and therefore on the expectations from the report it finances. The degree of objectivity and credibility is therefore not dissimilar from what can be expected from a study commissioned by a fast-food chain on the nutritional value of its hamburgers, or by a tobacco company on the harmlessness of its products – unless, of course, we naively choose to believe that public health authorities are insensitive to the pressure and interests of pharmaceutical lobby groups and other powerful special interest groups, to which they are constantly exposed as a matter of course.
   
• Second, it is quite obvious that in 2002 the health authorities of Ireland were already under heavy political pressure by pharmaceutically-sponsored international groups to ban smoking in public, thus they were hard pressed for the quick generation of “domestic evidence” to justify politically the implementation of an already-made decision on prohibition.

The final blow to the credibility of this report (aside from the shaky scientific grounds) is in its own opening lines, repeated here: “[to] Identify and report on the degree of consensus that exists among leading international scientific authorities on the question of the hazard and risk posed by environmental tobacco smoke to human health in the workplace.”

That means that not only do they proceed from the unproven postulation that ETS is a risk for human health, but they intentionally confuse science with democracy for politicians' and the public's consumption!  We know that it is a scientific and epidemiological fact that a maximum of 30% risk elevation does not even prove the EXISTENCE of the risk when multi-factorial diseases are involved (elevation required to establish the existence of a risk: 200 - 300%) – let alone whether the risk may actually turn into a disease or death. That reality is also confirmed, as already mentioned, by the infinitesimal amounts of toxic components in ETS, all well below the Threshold Limit Value (TLV) – the industrial threshold of toxic exposure on the workplace set forth by the United States. Thus, unless we want to change the 200 - 300% elevation rule (in which case thousands of everyday items suddenly become a deadly risk – from milk to olive oil, from douches to bras) the existence of a “consensus of leading scientific authorities” is irrelevant – unless, of course, we are willing to finally admit that scientific rules have become quite “flexible” to be better instruments for the political goals of “public health”. The massive cost of this dishonest use of science by public institutions in terms of economics, liberty, social cohesion and public trust are not the object of this critique.

In conclusion this study is, once again, the confirmation of the deceptive scientific philosophy generally sponsored by pharmaceutical multinationals, lobbied and disseminated by special interest groups, promoted by incompetent and sensation-prone media, and – worse of all – embraced by "public health" politicians. The implicit message of this “philosophy” is that, if the majority of "experts" ever expressed a "consensus" that 2 + 2 = 3, that would then be the unquestionable basis for policies, regulation, taxation, prohibition, segregation (as well as public indexing of those who dissent), regardless of the obvious, and without any verification of databases and rationale, nor with any question whatsoever on the integrity or competence of those who propose the equation – taken as granted in sole virtue of their "authority" and academic positions.

In short, the unconditional acceptance of scientific insanity, ethical vice and political dishonesty – by the bamboozled majority, and for our own good.

FORCES International