Lauren Matter

Anchor/Reporter

8:59 p.m. CDT, October 2, 2011
Four months into Springfield’s city wide smoking ban, some businesses are seeing a decline in revenue.

The owner of one Springfield bar, Tailgaters Pub and Eatery on South Scenic Avenue, says they have been losing $1,000 a week since the ban went into effect and had no choice but to close the first weekend of October.

Other pubs and restaurants are seeing a revenue decline as well.

The numbers range from 25% to a 45% drop in the amount of money they’re bringing in now compared to before the ban.

http://www.kspr.com/news/local/kspr-springfield-business-journal-smoking-ban-taking-toll-on-few-springfield-bars-20111002,0,5160335.story

Its a funny thing the st louis fed did an economic impact study on smoking bans and I dont believe their connected to big tobacco at all:

[PDF]
The Economic Impact of a Smoking Ban in Columbia, Missouri: An …research.stlouisfed.org/publications/red/2008/01/Pakko.pdfSimilar
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by MR Pakko – 2008 – Cited by 6 – Related articles
evidence on the economic impact of smoking bans, much of … Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Regional Economic Development, 2008, 4(1), pp. 30-40. 30 …

http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/red/2006/02/Pakko.pdf

The U.S. national annual background dose for humans is approximately 360 mrem. A mrem, or millirem, is a standard measure of radiation dose. Examples of radiation doses from common medical procedures are:

Chest x-ray (14 x 17 inch area) – 15 mrem

Dental x-ray (3 inch diameter area) – 300 mrem

Spinal x-ray (14 x 17 inch area) – 300 mrem

Thyroid uptake study – 28,000 mrem to the thyroid

Thyroid oblation – 18,000,000 mrem to the thyroid

Average Annual Total
361 mrem/year

Tobacco (If You Smoke, Add ~ 280 mrem)

Not quite 1 dental xray for a whole years smoking ehh!

or

Thyroid oblation – 18,000,000 mrem to the thyroid /shrinking the thyroid

Tobacco (If You Smoke, Add ~ 280 mrem)

18,000,000 / 280 = roughly 64,000 years of equivalent years of smoking!

http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/rp/factsheets/factsheets-htm/fs10bkvsman.htm

JOINT STATEMENT ON THE RE-ASSESSMENT OF THE TOXICOLOGICAL TESTING OF TOBACCO PRODUCTS”
7 October, the COT meeting on 26 October and the COC meeting on 18
November 2004.

http://cot.food.gov.
uk/pdfs/cotstatement
tobacco0409

“5. The Committees commented that tobacco smoke was a highly complex chemical mixture and that the causative agents for smoke induced diseases (such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, effects on reproduction and on offspring) was unknown. The mechanisms by which tobacco induced adverse effects were not established. The best information related to tobacco smoke – induced lung cancer, but even in this instance a detailed mechanism was not available. The Committees therefore agreed that on the basis of current knowledge it would be very difficult to identify a toxicological testing strategy or a biomonitoring approach for use in volunteer studies with smokers where the end-points determined or biomarkers measured were predictive of the overall burden of tobacco-induced adverse disease.”

In other words … our first hand smoke theory is so lame we can’t even design a bogus lab experiment to prove it. In fact … we don’t even know how tobacco does all of the magical things we claim it does.

The greatest threat to the second hand theory is the weakness of the first hand theory.

OSHA / NIOSH RESEARCH

In 1991 NIOSH { OSHA’ research group} Looked into ETS although at the time they recommended reducing ETS exposure they found the studies lacking.

NIOSH recognizes that these recent epidemiological studies have several shortcomings: lack of objective measures for charachterizing and quantifying exposures,failures to adjust for all confounding variables,potential misclassification of ex-smokers as non-smokers,unavailability of comparison groups that have not been exposed to ETS, and low statistical power.

Research is needed to investigate the following issues:

1. More acurate quantification of the increased risk of lung cancer associated with ETS exposure,including determination of other contributing factors[e.g.,occupational exposures]that may accentuate the risk.

2.Determination of the concentration and distributuion of ETS components in the workplace to help quantify the risk for the U.S. working population.

a.The association of ETS exposure with cancer other than lung cancer
b.The relationship between ETS exposure and cardiovascular disease
c.The relationship between ETS exposure and nonmalignant resporatory diseases such asthma,bronchitis and emphysema, and
the effects of ETS on lung function and respiratory systems
c. Possible mechanisms of ETS damage to the cardiovascular system,such as platelet aggravation,increased COHb leading to oxygen depravation,or damage to endothelium
d.Effects of workplace smoking restrictions on the ETS exposure of nonsmokersand ETS-related health effects in nonsmokers

After ten years of no conclusive research and lack of studies that didn’t eliminate the bias OSHA decided that the studies did not have substance and here is there present policy.

Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS)

Because the organic material in tobacco doesn’t burn completely, cigarette smoke contains more than 4,700 chemical compounds. Although OSHA has no regulation that addresses tobacco smoke as a whole, 29 CFR 1910.1000 Air contaminants, limits employee exposure to several of the main chemical components found in tobacco smoke. In normal situations, exposures would not exceed these permissible exposure limits (PELs), and, as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, OSHA will not apply the General Duty Clause to ETS.