Turns Out There Is No Risk From Second Hand Smoke

Or not enough risk to get worked up about. We Were Wrong To Panic About Secondhand Smoke?

The short answer is yes. You can't hear the long answer because it is drowned out by all of the shouting about "settled science."

In 2003, UCLA epidemiologist James Enstrom and I published a study of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)—also called "secondhand smoke" or "passive smoking"—in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Using data from the American Cancer Society's prospective study of 1 million adults, we concluded that ETS exposure was not associated with increased mortality.

Since that conclusion flew in the face of the conventional wisdom that had long driven state and local bans on smoking in public places, our study understandably sparked a controversy in the public health community. But the intensity of the attack on us in the pages of a medical journal—by critics who were certain that our study had to be wrong but typically failed to provide specific evidence of fatal errors—vividly illustrates what can happen when policy preferences that have taken on the status of doctrine override rational scientific debate.

Rational scientific debate? We can't have that. The 21st Century is all about feelings, and so my feelings trump your facts any day of the week.

As hard as it may be for some people to believe, science gave up claims to "ultimate truth" at the end of the 19th Century. If you're looking for ultimate truth, you should study religion or philosophy. That means the science is never settled.

Exposure to ETS is known to cause eye and throat irritation and to exacerbate preexisting respiratory conditions. In addition, it is simply disagreeable to many people (including me). But assessing the claim that ETS is potentially deadly requires dispassionate examination of the available scientific evidence.

That is not what Enstrom and I encountered when we published our BMJ paper. Critics were outraged by the article and demanded its retraction. But they were never able to satisfactorily explain why such an extreme step was justified.

Because the people screaming are not engaged in science; they are defending their religious position. In this case about 2nd hand or environmental smoke.

Hat tip to Small Dead Animals: The Sound Of Settled Scienc e

Because there’s no grift in “likely negligible”.

There is a link in that paragraph to some of the "grift." That is, some of the ways the lawyers got rich suing over a non-existent hazard.