{"id":1038,"date":"2010-02-13T00:23:52","date_gmt":"2010-02-13T05:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/?p=1038"},"modified":"2013-02-03T11:52:57","modified_gmt":"2013-02-03T16:52:57","slug":"homeopathic-smoking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/homeopathic-smoking\/","title":{"rendered":"Homeopathic Smoking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year the nicotine nannies (NNs) took their Second Hand Smoke nonsense a step further and announced that third hand smoke<\/a> (THS?) was deadly.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The evidence consisted of someone doing a survey, asking people if they believed <\/em>this nonsense, then presenting that as scientific proof.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 “Journalists” ran with the story, declaring that smokers who had politely avoided smoking near anyone were still deadly bags of toxins.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s not hyperbole: the gullible Dr. Nancy Snyderman declared, on national TV, that smokers were “a walking toxic dump.”<\/p>\n

The purpose of this is, of course, is to continue the NNs tireless crusade to make non-smokers hate and fear smokers.<\/p>\n

This kind of nonsense might be amusing if it didn’t have such serious consequences.\u00c2\u00a0 In the UK one hospital banned smokers<\/a> from visiting patients, for fear of third hand smoke contamination.<\/p>\n

The latest “study” on THS comes out of Berkley.\u00c2\u00a0 (Surprise!)\u00c2\u00a0 Unable to find any dangerous levels of anything in THS, they exposed particulates to nitrous acid and announced that it resulted in horrible deadly tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs)<\/p>\n

The study hasn’t been published yet, so they’re using the oh-so-respectable method of Science-By-Press-Release to spread their message of fear and hate.\u00c2\u00a0 In their release<\/a> they mention children, toddlers and infants over and over and over.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course.<\/p>\n

Just how much of this stuff have they managed to fabricate in their lab?\u00c2\u00a0 The lead “researcher” explains:\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Whereas the sidestream smoke of one cigarette contains at least 100 nanograms equivalent total TSNAs, our results indicate that several hundred nanograms per square meter of nitrosamines may be formed on indoor surfaces in the presence of nitrous acid.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Most people don’t douse their furniture or their smoking friends with nitrous acid, but for the sake of this thought experiment let’s pretend they do.\u00c2\u00a0 How much toxin is he talking about?<\/p>\n

A nanogram is a billionth of a gram.\u00c2\u00a0 A single grain of salt weighs about 120,000 nanograms.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s assume this shill’s extremely imprecise “several hundred” means 300.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, let’s make it 500 to make the math easier.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re talking the mass of 1\/240 of a grain of salt spread over a square meter.\u00c2\u00a0 Oooo, scary stuff.<\/p>\n

You’ll find a more complete explanation of the “study” here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As someone commented on this<\/a> blog, at these levels talking about Homeopathic<\/em> Smoking.\u00c2\u00a0 Homeopathy claims that diluting a toxin increases its strength, so reducing exposure to THS or SHS increases the danger.\u00c2\u00a0 Quick, get to a smoke-filled room!<\/p>\n

My contempt for these dirt-bag hate-mongering pseudo-scientists exceeds my ability to articulate it.\u00c2\u00a0 They should be stripped of everything they own, including their obviously meaningless degrees, and forced to stand in the middle of the freeway holding signs that say, “Will Fabricate Facts For Food.”\u00c2\u00a0 That won’t happen until I’m made King of The World, which is a ways off, so expect to see more of this nonsense flooding the media in the months and years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year the nicotine nannies (NNs) took their Second Hand Smoke nonsense a step further and announced that third hand smoke (THS?) was deadly.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The evidence consisted of someone doing a survey, asking people if they believed this nonsense, then presenting that as scientific proof.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 “Journalists” ran with the story, declaring that smokers who had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[71,40],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1038"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1040,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions\/1040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}