By Albert R. Faunce
Anderson resident
Smoking is a habit from which everyone should refrain. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports there are 443,000 smoking deaths per year. Also, frequently quoted is that secondhand smoke causes 53,000 deaths annually.
These figures are quoted in nearly every media article on smoking bans, but did you ever wonder how they were derived? The percent of smokers in 1991 was 26.5 compared to 19.8 in 2007. Even though the total number of smokers has decreased by over 700,000, the number of smoking attributable deaths increased from 434,000 to 443,000. How did that happen? These figures come from CDC’s computer. The estimate is described as the number of deaths associated with smoking — not caused by it. For example, there are many risk factors associated with heart disease such as hypertension, high serum cholesterol, obesity, sedentary lifestyle, smoking and genetic factor.
The risk factors have risk ratios, which are fed into CDC’s SAMMEC II (Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Morbidity and Economic Costs computer as fractional risks, to generate these statistics. Suppose John Smoker died, had heart disease and all the other associated risk factors. He had six Statistically Attributable Factors (SAFs) associated with his death. When the results are totaled, the number who actually died of the attributable cause is much larger, thus a built-in over-count. The overcount is the result of logical and epidemiological errors and lack of scientific integrity. Rosalind Marimount, a retired Bureau of Standards mathematician, figured the actual mortality at 200,000 to 270,000 smoking associated deaths. With absolute certainty, however, no human beings have ever been studied to find out.
The Science Policy Research Division of the Congressional Research Service was asked to research the source of the claim of 53,000 deaths from secondhand smoke. The research service found the following: 50,000 was a number mentioned in testimony by the American Medical Association, which stated that secondhand smoke kills 50,000 annually through heart disease.
Three thousand deaths from lung cancer is attributable to the Environmental Protection Agency from a 1992 report since debunked by a federal judge. The 50,000 is ultimately traceable to an article published in 1988 in Environmental International, by A. Judson Wells, (An Estimate of Adult Mortality in the United States from Passive Smoking. Vol. 14, No. 3 1988, 249-265).
The Congressional Research Service states, “Our analysis suggests that the Wells estimates are so high relative to measures of physical exposure that they seem implausible. Also, the absence of controls or the inability to control for other factors is a major problem in relying on epidemiological estimates of the health effects of SAS.” The research group found the estimated premature lung cancer deaths annually from secondhand smoke for never smokers would be 3 to 600 and 700 deaths from coronary disease for never smokers and perhaps another 350 for former smokers, for a total of 1,053 to 1,650, considerably smaller than the 53,000 figure commonly repeated in the media.
California Polytechnic economics professor Michael Marlow recently looked at the question of the real risks of secondhand smoke exposure in comparison to several of the negative consequences of smoking bans, and concluded that: “To achieve a political goal, advocates of smoking bans may exaggerate the risk of secondhand smoke and deny evidence of economic harm to some businesses. Distorted presentations of epidemiological and economic evidence has the adverse effect of increasing total health risk, and of undermining the integrity of science.”
The grossly overstated dangers of secondhand smoke to health have distorted the nation’s health priorities. To equate secondhand smoke with alcohol or drugs as teenage dangers is obviously absurd, and would never have happened if the health dangers of secondhand smoke had been accurately reported. Money, time and effort are being spent for promoting untruthful claims that simply lessen the credibility of the nonsmoking effort.
