Introduction

Ouch! Is this ever a tight scientific language... It simply means that the pollutants emitted by cigarettes are basically the same to the ones emitted by motor vehicles, just the proportions between the pollutants change with the type of emissions (smoke or car exhaust).

Here are further excerpts from the sampling methodology:

[...]

"Experimental samples of environmental tobacco smoke were taken on different occasions in Junggrens Cafe, located along the Parade Avenue in Gothenburg, and well known for its delicious sandwiches. The volume of the room is ca. 150 m3 and about ten smoking and ten non-smoking customers were present during sampling. The absence of prominent contributions from room- specific sources in the cafe was ascertained by comparisons with samples from other smoky indoor places and with background samples taken before the opening of the cafe."

"Sidestream cigarette smoke was obtained by dropping a lit cigarette into a 100-ml. glass vessel. Samples of gas were taken after 2 min. The volume of the glass vessel was not critical with respect to the resulting hydrocarbon composition. The commercial brands studied were Blend Ultima (Swedish) and Marlboro Light."

[...]

"Samples were taken on two occasions during urban driving in Gothenburg from Chalmers University of Technology to the Central Railway Station and back again. The driving time of 20 mins. included 10-20 stops at traffic lights and intersections. The engine was warm from the start, the windows were closed, and the fan was set to intermediate speed. the ambient temperature was 10-20 C and the air was moderately turbulent..."

and:

"Samples were taken on triple-layer cartridges (glass, 150 mm. X 4 mm. I.D.) with Tenax TA (0.6 ml., 60/80 mesh, Chrompack) Carbotrap (0.4 ml, 40 mesh, Chrompack) and Carbosieve S-III (0.4 ml, 60/80 mesh, Chrompack) as adsorbents. The sampling volumes were ca. 1 ml for sidestream smoke and ~ 500 ml for ambient air. The analytical separations were performed on a 50 m X .32 mm I.D. fused-silica PLOT column (Chrompack) with aluminum oxide-5% potassium chloride as the stationary phase" [...] "Mass-spectra, total-ion chromatograms and single-ion chromatograms were obtained from a Varian Saturn II ion trap mass spectrometer, coupled to an aluminum oxide column in the GC unit. Gas samples of sidestream cigarette smoke were injected directly onto the GC-MS system without absorbent sampling."

That's great... but what about the results in English? Here is what the authors discovered:

[...] "The elevated concentration of isoprene in the car is likely to be explained by isoprene in exhaled air from the two persons in the car. The isoprene content in exhaled air may approach 1,000 micrograms/cubic meter [14]. Differences in net human uptake between the hydrocarbons may also give rise to minor differences in concentrations. Thus benzene is known to be excreted through breath to a greater extent than alkylbenzenes [15]."

Careful, now: this is a very dangerous statement. It is on the basis of statements like this that some B.C. or Californian city council may decide to forbid breathing while driving if there are children in the car!

Now, this is really interesting:

"In Table II, exposure levels for selected hazardous hydrocarbons are compared. The recorded concentrations are of the same order of magnitude in the smoky room as in the private car during urban driving. The alkene levels tend to be highest for cigarette smoke and the arene levels tend to be highest for traffic pollution. The cafe` is regarded as being smokier than average cafes, but less smoky than many pubs. The lower in-vehicle level corresponds to moderate wind and traffic, whereas the upper level corresponds to weak wind and peak traffic. The upper in- vehicle concentrations were similar to those observed for volatile arenes in a recent study of hydrocarbons in commuter cars [16]. The road tunnel concentrations correspond to peak traffic and are 5-10 times higher than the in-vehicle levels. This is explained mainly by the limited dilution of the traffic emissions in the tunnel."

PLEASE NOTE: Table I is not shown because it shows the long, itemized list of each single chemical component constituting the totals in Table II. The itemized list of components is available upon request.

Comments

From this study we can extrapolate a couple of important points:

1) There is basically no difference between the air quality of a smoky cafe` or restaurant, and the air quality inside a car driving in any town, providing that you keep your windows closed, (otherwise it's worse!), and providing that the car does no go through a tunnel (in this case we have up to 10 times more emissions)

2) Since most restaurants are located in urban areas, and because of (1), the air artificially circulated inside the restaurant ends up being of the same quality regardless of the smoking policy, given that there is appropriately designed ventilation.

To demonstrate (2), consider Figure 1. It represents a downtown restaurant room with appropriate air circulation, let's say 1 cubic foot/minute per 5 cubic feet of room volume. Case 1 represents single main air intake, while Case 2 represents multiple air intakes [i.e: fan(s), window(s), other door(s), etc.] The room is nonsmoking, and located in a downtown area. If the room is, say, 20,000 cubic feet, it will circulate about 4,000 cubic feet of polluted outside air per minute.
While there is basically no difference between a car moving though polluted air, and a stationary room moving polluted air through it, it must be said, at this point, that even though the concentration of pollutants taken in by the restaurant is usually inferior to the concentration of pollutants in the car, the restaurant's ventilation system takes in a much larger volume of air. Moreover, the location of the restaurant is a determining factor in the concentration of air pollutants: a restaurant located at the regulated crossing of two main streets will be subject to much more pollution due to idling engines than a restaurant located on a secondary street.

Since Table II of the study indicates no substantial difference between a smoky cafe` and a car in traffic, the logical conclusion is that you are inhaling the same amount of pollutants as if you were in the smoky cafe`. Does that mean that if we smoke in the room we are adding pollution to the already polluted air? Not really.

Consider figure 1 again. It represents the same room, but here smoking is allowed in the smoking section. The smoking section is appropriately located downstream to the non-smoking section. If you observe the air circulation vectors, you see that the air stream carries the smoke away from the smoking area, without affecting the non-smokers except -- perhaps -- in the border area. Only if the room is not appropriately ventilated there can be a transfer of smoky air from the smoking to the nonsmoking section.

Case rested.

More than any other consideration, this study points out one undisputable reality: emissions are inescapable. If we want the benefits and comforts of modern civilizations, we have to pay the price. The schizophrenia comes in when we want one without the other; when we boast about liberty, and we deny the freedom of choice; when we twist facts and perceptions to the point that the offended becomes the offender; when we are talking about protecting children from 0.1 grams a day of second hand smoke, and we are exposing them to two pound a day of industrial and automotive pollution.

At the end of it all, one comforting thought comes to mind: no matter how stupid and vitriolic the antismokers are; regardless of the lies, politics, corruption and manipulations of the antismoking campaign, one reality exists:

We are all smokers, whether we like it, or not.

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