Toxic air pollutants from secondhand cannabis bong smoke are four times worse than that from cigarettes.
First-of-its-kind research shows dangers of secondhand cannabis smoke
Toxic air pollutants from secondhand cannabis bong smoke are four times worse than that from cigarettes.
By Elise Proulx
April 1, 2022
Although 27% of young adults believe secondhand cannabis smoke (SHCS) exposure is safe, cannabis smoke has several hundred toxic chemicals, carcinogens, and fine particulate matter, many at higher concentrations than tobacco smoke.
Despite the known dangers of secondhand tobacco smoke, there has been a lack of research focused on the risk of SHCS from social cannabis smoking.
However, a new paper published March 30, 2022, in JAMA Network Open by authors Patton Khuu Nguyen, MPH, and Berkeley Public Health Professor of Environmental Health Sciences S. Katharine Hammond, is the first to quantify SHCS levels from social cannabis smoking using a bong in the home. The research reveals concentrations greatly exceeded those in homes with tobacco cigarette or hookah smoking and decayed very slowly, which suggests that, contrary to popular beliefs, bong smoking is not safe for those nearby.
Nguyen, who is a graduate of Berkeley Public Health, was selected as UC Berkeley’s inaugural Smoke and Tobacco Free Fellow in 2017. This research was conducted while he was a student at Berkeley Public Health.
“SHCS in the home can expose nonsmokers to extremely high concentrations of fine particulate matter, as much as 10 times greater than the very unhealthy wildfire smoke the Bay Area experienced during the orange sky days of September 2020,” says Nguyen. “Fine particulate matter decayed so slowly that even 12 hours after cannabis smoking ceased, the daily average concentration still exceeded US EPA daily standard by six-fold. Exposure to fine particulate matter above suggested limits has been shown to cause premature death, strokes, reduced lung function, and increased mortality from lung cancer and heart disease.”
“The public should be aware of the potential concerns with secondhand cannabis smoke,” said Nguyen. “Smokers should understand how smoking indoors can impact others and potentially expose children, pregnant women, the elderly, workers, and nonsmokers. Public health policies should establish cannabis smoke-free environments similar to tobacco smoke-free environments.”
Read the full paper on JAMA Network Open: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2790510
Flight that crashed and killed 66 people was caused by pilot’s cigarette, investigation finds
Flight that crashed and killed 66 people was caused by pilot’s cigarette, investigation finds
By Snejana Farberov
April 27, 2022
An EgyptAir flight that crashed en route to Cairo, killing all 66 people on board, was brought down by a pilot who had a cigarette in the cockpit and started a fire, a new report found.
EgyptAir flight MS804 was traveling on May 19, 2016, from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to Cairo International Airport when it fell out of the sky between the Greek island of Crete and northern Egypt.
France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) has since concluded that pilot Mohamed Said Shoukair’s mid-air smoke break led to a fire onboard the Airbus A320 jet when his cigarette ignited oxygen leaking from an oxygen mask in the cockpit.
The air disaster resulted in the deaths of 56 passengers and 10 crew members, among them 12 French nationals, 30 Egyptians, two Iraqis, one Canadian and one British citizen.
Egyptian authorities initially said that the plane crash was the result of a terrorist attack, claiming that traces of explosives had been found on the bodies of the victims, but those allegations were widely discredited.
In 2018, France’s BEA determined that the flight went down because of a fire onboard based on analysis of data from the aircraft’s black box recorder, which was recovered from deep water near Greece by the US Navy — though at the time investigators did not say what specifically caused the onboard inferno.
But in March 2022, BEA released a new report that alleges that oxygen had leaked from a pilot’s oxygen mask in the cockpit shortly before the crash, based on black box data that captured the sound of the oxygen hissing.
The oxygen mask in question had been replaced just three days before the fateful flight by an EgyptAir maintenance worker, but for an unknown reason it had its release valve set to the “emergency position,” which, according to the Airbus safety manual, could lead to leaks.
Incredibly, at the time of the incident, EgyptAir pilots were allowed to smoke in the cockpit – a rule that has since changed. The onboard smoking, combined with the leaking oxygen, had set the stage for the fire, according to French aviation experts.
The deadly plane crash is currently the subject of a manslaughter case before the Paris Court of Appeals.
The 134-page report, which was reviewed by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra, was released to the Parisian court at the request of local judges.
Egypt has refused to release its own report into the crash and in 2018 rejected BEA’s initial findings, dismissing them as “unfounded.”
Families of victims have accused the Egyptian authorities of failing to cooperate with the investigation into the crash.
Antoine Lachenaud, a lawyer representing the family of Clement Daeschner-Cormary, a 26-year-old passenger who died, said the new report showed that the crash was caused by human error.
“When warnings are ignored in a systematic manner this results in a crash and it becomes impossible to maintain that this is due to chance,” he said.
Shame on the New York Times! Instead of asking “Where are the fathers of these children?” the New York Times blames childhood poverty on lack of government funding. Also, shame on the New York Times for saying “they had little choice.”
Here is a recent article from the New York Times about a bunch of unmarried women and their out-of-wedlock babies.
The word “father” does not appear in the article.
Instead, the New York Times uses the following words and phrases to explain why these women and children are living in poverty:
“have few options”
“waiting for subsidized housing”
“18 people had been inside the four-bedroom public housing unit, triple the number of people who had moved in a decade earlier”
“mothers, sons and daughters”
“they had little choice”
“a growing family forced to crowd ever more tightly into the apartment it already had”
“According to a 2016 assessment of housing needs in the city, Philadelphia is supplying less than 12 percent of the publicly supported housing needed for its low-income households”
“Without enough funding to support a program like that”
“Shakia Miller, who lives in a three-bedroom unit at the West Park Apartments, which are owned and managed by the housing authority, applied for a bigger place when she was pregnant with twin boys. They are now 9 years old, yet the family, which includes Ms. Miller’s three older children, is still living in the same apartment.”
“There were six people on the lease at that time, a number that expanded, by the time of the latest lease, to 14. There were three sisters, Rosalee, Virginia and Quinsha, and a growing number of children”
“There should have been a lot more resources for the family”
“For the families that are in such a situation, there may not be much of a choice at all.”
So that’s what’s in the article.
According to the New York Times, these women had no control over anything, and the reason that these women and their children are living in poverty is because the government is not spending enough money.
The New York Times never asks where the children’s fathers are.
The New York Times never asks why these women had so many out-of-wedlock babies that they could not afford to take care of.
Shame on the New York Times for not asking, “Where are the fathers of these children?”
Shame on the New York Times for blaming their poverty on lack of government funding!
Shame on the New York Times for falsely claiming these these women had no choice and no control over their situation!
I’d like to propose a new policy. Instead of the government spending more money on unmarried women and their out-of-wedlock babies, the government should stop funding them entirely.
Unmarried women who have babies out of wedlock should not be rewarded with public housing and section 8 vouchers.
Whatever you reward, you get more of.
We should stop rewarding unmarried women who have babies out of wedlock.
An unmarried women who has a baby out of wedlock should never be eligible for public housing or section 8 vouchers.
Before the Democrats started their “Great Society” and their “war on poverty” in the 1960s, only 5% of babies in the U.S. were born out of wedlock.
Today, it’s 40%.
This chart shows the increase. The chart is from this link at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nonmarital_Birth_Rates_in_the_United_States,_1940-2014.png
And now I’d like to talk about the origination of the fire that killed those mothers and their children.
First, someone removed the batteries from the home’s smoke detectors.
And second, a very careless and negligent cigarette smoker left their lighter in a place where a five-year-old boy was able to get it and then use it to set the family’s Christmas tree on fire. I don’t blame the five-year-old boy. I do blame the adult smoker.
This incident happened in Philadelphia. And while I don’t know the statistics for Philadelphia, I do know that in New York state, low-income smokers spend 25% of their income on cigarettes.
Choices matter.
Choices result in actions.
Actions result in consequences.
Having babies out of wedlock that you can’t afford is a choice, no matter how many times the New York Times writes that “they had little choice.”
Taking the batteries out of smoke detectors is also a choice that can lead to disastrous results.
Leaving a lighter where a five-year-old can get it is irresponsible and negligent.
Smoking is stupid.
Spending 25% of your income on cigarettes when your own children don’t even have adequate housing is inexcusable.
Childhood poverty would be greatly reduced if people behaved responsibly. Let’s consider two groups of people in the U.S. The first group has a poverty rate of 2%. The second group has a poverty rate of 76%.
The first group consists of people who followed all three of these steps:
1) Finish high school.
2) Get a full-time job.
3) Wait until age 21 and get married before having children.
The second group consists of people who followed zero of those three steps.
Among people who follow all three of these steps, the poverty rate is 2%.
Among people who follow zero of these steps, the poverty rate is 76%.
My source for that information is this article, which refers to this PDF, and the relevant data is on page 15 of the PDF. The study uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Finally, I’m going to end this blog post by posting a video of the song “Love Child” by the Supremes from the 1960s. By today’s standards, this song would be considered extremely conservative, as well as racist and sexist. It’s a great song, with a lesson that needs to be taught more often:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdmGO-GvHyo
Idiot smoker kills 12 people in Philadelphia
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:
A 5-year-old boy who escaped the fire that killed 12 people in a Fairmount apartment Wednesday told investigators the blaze started after he accidentally lit a Christmas tree on fire while playing with a lighter, according to police records obtained by The Inquirer.
I don’t blame the child for this.
I do blame the smoker who left their lighter within reach of the child.
Study: E-cigarettes might help smokers quit
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/blowing-smoke-cigarettes-smokers-quit-48872459
Blowing smoke? E-cigarettes might help smokers quit
July 26, 2017
People who used e-cigarettes were more likely to kick the habit than those who didn’t, a new study found.
Nicotine patches, gums and medications are known to aid smoking cessation, but there’s no consensus on whether vaping devices can help anti-smoking efforts. The U.S. research is the largest look yet at electronic cigarette users and it found e-cigarettes played a role in helping people quit.
“It’s absolutely clear that e-cigarettes help smokers replace cigarettes,” said Peter Hajek, director of the health and lifestyle research unit at Queen Mary University in London, who wasn’t part of the study.
Smoking rates have been generally declining for decades. Health experts have credited taxes on tobacco products and anti-smoking ads for the drop.
E-cigarettes have been sold in the U.S. since 2007. Most devices heat a liquid nicotine solution into vapor and were promoted to smokers as a less dangerous alternative since they don’t contain all the chemicals, tar or odor of regular cigarettes.
Researchers analyzed and compared data collected by the U.S. Census from 2001 to 2015, including the number of adult e-cigarette users from the most recent survey.
About two-thirds of e-cigarette users tried to quit smoking compared to 40 percent of non-users, the study found. E-cigarette users were more likely to succeed in quitting for at least three months than non-users — 8 percent versus 5 percent.
The research was published online Wednesday in the journal, BMJ. It was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The rate of people quitting smoking in the U.S. has remained steady at about 4.5 percent for years. It jumped to 5.6 percent in 2014-2015, representing about 350,000 fewer smokers. It was the first recorded rise in the smoking cessation rate in 15 years.
While national anti-smoking campaigns likely helped, the results show e-cigarette use also played an important role, said lead author Shu-Hong Zhu of the University of California, San Diego.
Hajek, who wasn’t part of the research, said vaping devices shouldn’t be strictly regulated, but instead be allowed to compete directly with cigarettes. “That way, smokers can get what they want without killing themselves,” he said.
Earlier this month, a House panel renewed its efforts to prevent the Food and Drug Administration from requiring retroactive safety reviews of e-cigarettes already on the market.
Others warned that the long-term side effects of e-cigarettes are unknown.
“We just don’t know if moving to e-cigarettes is good enough to reduce the harm,” said Aruni Bhatnagar, director of the American Heart Association’s Tobacco Research and Addiction Center.
Chris Bullen, who authored an accompanying editorial , said although the long-term safety of e-cigarettes is unclear, any ill effects are “likely to be rare compared with the harms of continuing to smoke.”
The latest results strongly suggest that more lenient control of e-cigarettes could improve population health, said Bullen, a professor of public health at the University of Auckland.
“If every smoker was to change over to e-cigarettes completely, there would be a dramatic and almost immediate public health benefit,” he said in an email.
Ignoring huge amounts of medical and scientific evidence, Mike Pence falsely said “smoking doesn’t kill”
The Centers for Disease Control states:
Tobacco use remains the single largest preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. Cigarette smoking kills more than 480,000 Americans each year, with more than 41,000 of these deaths from exposure to secondhand smoke.
The National Institutes of Health states:
Cigarette smoking is regarded as a major risk factor in the development of lung cancer, which is the main cause of cancer deaths in men and women in the United States and the world….
… The Surgeon General’s report in 2004 concluded that in the United States, cigarette smoking has caused 12 million deaths since 1964…
… An analysis by European health experts determined that in developed countries as a whole, tobacco is responsible for 24% of all male deaths and 7% of all female deaths; these figures rise to over 40% in men in some countries of central and eastern Europe and to 17% in women in the United States. The average decreased life span of smokers is approximately eight years…
Despite this, Mike Pence said:
“Time for a quick reality check. Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.”
Poor smokers in New York state spend 25% of income on cigarettes, study finds
Poor Smokers in New York State Spend 25% of Income on Cigarettes, Study Finds
September 19, 2012
ALBANY — Low-income smokers in New York spend 25 percent of their income on cigarettes, according to a new study, which led advocates for smokers’ rights to say it proved high taxes were regressive and ineffective.
The American Cancer Society said that the study, using state data, showed a need to help more poor New Yorkers quit smoking or never start. The study was conducted by the Public Health and Policy Research program of RTI, a nonprofit institute.
In New York, which has the nation’s highest cigarette taxes, a pack of cigarettes can cost $12, though many smokers have turned to buying cheaper cigarettes online or to using roll-your-own devices.
Wealthier smokers — those earning $60,000 or more — spend 2 percent on cigarettes, according to the study.
“The poor pay $600 million in cigarette taxes and get little help in quitting,” Russ Sciandra of the American Cancer Society said.
Mr. Sciandra said state statistics showed that smokers earning less than $30,000 a year paid 39 percent of state and city taxes on cigarettes. He added that more of the cigarette tax revenue should be used to finance smoking-cessation programs.
Mr. Sciandra said other studies showed that lower-income smokers had less success at quitting. He said low-income smokers trying to quit were hampered by being around many smokers and having less cash to buy smoking-cessation aids.
Audrey Silk of Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, an advocacy group, said the study showed that cigarette taxes were punitive and “undeniably regressive.”
“It busts their theory that high taxes equal submission to their coercive measure,” Ms. Silk said. She criticized those in government who opposed smoking and increased related taxes.
Peter Constantakes of the State Health Department argued that tax increases and other programs were helping more people to quit. “New York is promoting a number of antismoking initiatives, including targeted media campaigns, that are designed to reduce the smoking rate among lower-income groups and prevent young people from becoming smokers,” he said.
I hope this cigarette will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law
Officials say cigarette sparked fatal motel fire
March 20, 2015
The state police fire marshal today said a cigarette was the cause of a fatal motel fire in Westmoreland County on Thursday.
Timothy Paul Shane, 43, of Hempfield was killed in the fire at the Motel 3 on Route 30 in Adamsburg, according to the county coroner’s office.
State police fire marshal Scott Mackanick ruled the fire an accident and said Mr. Shane was smoking a cigarette that ignited the blaze around 6:30 a.m.
A section of Route 30 was closed in the area of the fire, as was the Irwin exit off of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Mr. Shane’s cause and manner of death are pending toxicology results from an autopsy, the fire marshal said.
Wal-Mart employee says he “can’t afford” $15 a week for health insurance, but has no trouble paying for cigarettes
CBNC reports:
Wal-Mart Stores’ U.S. employees will pay between 8 percent and 36 percent more in premiums for its medical coverage in 2013, prompting some of the 1.4 million workers at the nation’s largest private employer to say they will forego coverage altogether.
“I really can’t even afford it now, so for it to go up even a dollar for me is a stretch,” said Colby Harris, who said he makes $8.90 per hour and takes home less than $20,000 per year working in the Walmart store’s produce department in Lancaster, Texas.
Harris, a 22-year-old smoker, was set to see his cost per paycheck rise to $29.60 from $25.40. He says he has decided not to sign up for coverage.
The same article also refers to Wal-Mart’s “two-week pay period.” So this guy is saying that he “can’t afford” to pay $15 per week for health insurance, and yet he somehow manages to pay for his cigarettes.
I wonder how much he spends on cigarettes each week. The article doesn’t say – but I’m guessing it’s more than $15.
Check out this beautiful orange fireball as a smoker lights up at a gas station!
This is certainly one of the prettier things I’ve seen on YouTube:
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Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 
