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A U.C. San Francisco study has revealed that young adults who deeply believe that the tobacco industry is composed of low-down, degenerate, gutless, slimy, watermelon-fucking sons of bitches are far less likely to smoke than their colleagues with less malevolent feelings toward Big Tobacco.
While this seems like the ultimate no-brainer, UCSF scientists say the data reveals a lot; this, they claim, is the first study to ever link interviewees' attitudes toward the tobacco industry to 18-to-25-year-olds' actual behavior. Depending upon young adults' responses to queries like "Taking a stand against smoking is important to me" or "I would like to see cigarette companies go out of business," researchers claim those with strongly anti-tobacco sentiments are only one-third as likely to smoke as their more wishy-washy companions. Those who do smoke -- but badmouth the industry -- are four times more likely to seriously contemplate quitting than blasé respondents.
The findings -- published this month in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine -- give ammo to those who'd like to see Big Tobacco targeted as a bunch of heartless bastards . . .
it warrants mentioning that the study was funded in part by the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute -- because such an organization exists. You are now free to demonize the tobacco industry -- BING!
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What’s Known on This Subject
There is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke. Thirdhand smoke is residual tobacco smoke contamination that remains after the cigarette is extinguished. Children are uniquely susceptible to thirdhand smoke exposure.
What This Study Adds
No studies have explored whether beliefs toward thirdhand smoke are associated with behaviors that affect the health of children, such as setting strict no-smoking policies in the home. . . .
Our exploratory results do suggest a difference in protective home rules between those who simply agree that SHS is harmful to children and those who strongly agree that SHS is harmful to children. Emphasizing a high degree of harm caused by visible SHS may still have activity for encouraging home smoking bans. . . .
CONCLUSIONS
This study demonstrated that beliefs about the health effects of thirdhand smoke are independently associated with home smoking bans. Emphasizing that thirdhand smoke harms the health of children may be an important element in encouraging home smoking bans. Health messages about thirdhand smoke contamination could be easily incorporated into current tobacco control campaigns, programs, and routine clinical practice.
Action Points
* Explain to interested patients that it is well-known that second-hand smoke harms the health of children.
* Note that this study examined the behaviors associated with the belief that "third-hand smoke" -- toxins left on surfaces once tobacco smoke dissipates -- can also harm children's health.
* Explain the study found that fewer people are aware of the danger, but those who are were more likely to completely ban smoking in their home.
Such toxins are especially hazardous for children who breathe near the surfaces, crawl and play on them, or touch and mouth them, according to Jonathan Winickoff, M.D., of the Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, and colleagues.
Although most adults are aware of the danger of second-hand smoke for children, the risks of third-hand smoke are lesser known, Dr. Winickoff and colleagues said in the January issue of Pediatrics.
The conclusion is based on a nationally representative survey that examined beliefs about second- and third-hand smoke and behaviors derived from those beliefs, the researchers said.
The Social Climate Survey of Tobacco Control, an annual cross-sectional look at smoking, was given to 1,478 adults, reached by telephone, in November 2005. . . .
Primary source: Pediatrics Source reference: Winickoff JP, et al "Beliefs about the health effects of "thirdhand" smoke and home smoking bans"
Building the Field and Diffusing Information
This project will develop the pediatric workforce, clinical services, and policies essential to protecting the nation's children from secondhand tobacco smoke. . . .
Document, Data, and Dataset Repository, and Analytic Project
This component will provide a core data source and analysis center which will be used to: (1) ask and answer important secondhand smoke-related questions; (2) document negative consequences to children of secondhand smoke exposure; (3) study changes in clinical and public policy efforts to protect children from secondhand smoke exposure; (4) study changes in the social climate regarding children's secondhand smoke exposure; and (5) provide annual information about the progress of our nationwide efforts to protect children from secondhand smoke exposure. . . .
* Social Climate Survey for Tobacco Control (SCS TC)
The Social Climate Survey for Tobacco Control (SCS TC) is a national telephone survey that collects comprehensive data about adults' attitudes and practices regarding tobacco control and children's exposure to secondhand smoke . . .
* National Datasets Research in Children, Tobacco and Secondhand Smoke
One goal of the AAP Julius B. Richmond Center of Excellence is to provide support for analyses of public datasets to study secondhand smoke and tobacco exposure in children. . . .
For more information about dataset research opportunities, please contact Heleen le Roux.
Dissemination of Best Practices to Reduce Secondhand Tobacco Smoke
The project will begin nationwide dissemination of best practices to reduce secondhand smoke exposure of children, using an intensive state-by-state approach. . . .
2009 Dissemination of Best Practices Smoke Free Homes Conference
Legal and Regulatory Issues Around Children's Exposure to Secondhand Smoke . . .
Rapid Quantitative Assessment of Secondhand Smoke Exposure for Clinical Pediatric Settings
This project will develop or modify a rapid, in-office test for secondhand smoke exposure of children with particular emphasis on children age 0-6 years. . . .
Messages for Motivation and Support for Behavior Change in Parent Smoking
This project will design a communication toolkit to teach pediatricians the most effective methods to influence parent smoking behaviors. . . .
Translational research projects Several projects of the Richmond Center address the effectiveness of translating evidence into practice for tobacco prevention and control.
The Clinical Effort Against Secondhand Smoke Exposure (CEASE) national effectiveness PROS trial addresses parent secondhand smoke exposure using a theoretically-based intervention to improve adherence to evidence-based guidelines at the clinician level, facilitate change at the parent behavior level, and lead to implementation of systems changes at the practice level. Funded by NCI/NIDA and AHRQ.
The Smokebusters pilot adolescent cessation PROS trial addresses adolescent smoking cessation counseling by primary care pediatricians. Funded by NCI.
Development of a PediaLink educational module to provide on-line training to help pediatricians address the secondhand smoke exposure of children and parental smoking. Funded by FAMRI.
The Food and Drug Administration, bedeviled by a salmonella outbreak and tainted medicine from China, is likely to monitor imports and fresh produce more closely under an Obama administration.
With President Bush no longer a roadblock, health officials also can expect new powers to control tobacco, from cigarettes to the recently introduced smokeless products called snus.
President-elect Obama, a former smoker struggling to avoid relapse, is a sponsor of legislation giving the FDA authority to control, but not ban, tobacco and nicotine. . . .
Obama is being urged to move quickly to appoint an FDA commissioner. Already more than a half-dozen names are in circulation: outside critics such as Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Dr. Steven Nissen; insiders such as Susan Wood, a former director of the FDA's women's health office; and public health advocates such as Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, Baltimore's health chief. . . .
Under the tobacco proposal, the agency would be able to order changes in tobacco products to make them less toxic and addictive, but could not ban tobacco or nicotine. The bill passed the House and Senate with bipartisan support, but a veto threat from Bush kept it from getting out of Congress.
Aides to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., co-author of the tobacco bill, say there is strong interest in getting the legislation passed soon after the new Congress convenes in January. Obama is a co-sponsor.
Children who live in households with smokers may not get enough to eat, researchers reported here.
* Explain to interested patients that rates of food insecurity nearly doubled for children living in homes with smokers, and the highest rates of food insecurity were in children living in low-income households with smokers.
Rates of food insecurity -- the inability to access enough food every day -- were nearly doubled for children living in homes with smokers (17% versus 9%, PArchives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Rates of severe food insecurity more than tripled for these children (3% versus 0.9%, P=0.04), the researchers said.
Before the latest anti-smoking law went into effect last November, the amount of particulate matter from smoking in Israeli cafés, bars and pubs was nearly 20 times that permitted in indoor air, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and 10 times the levels measured at such establishments in countries where bans on smoking in public places are well enforced.
These findings were reported by Dr. Laura (Leah) Rosen and colleagues at the Tel Aviv University School of Public Health and Dr. Greg Connolly of the Harvard School of Public Health, who are now monitoring levels of particulate matter since the law took effect. Rosen told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that she hopes to have data to present by December. Both studies have been funded through Harvard by FAMRI, the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute. . . .
"Whether the new law will successfully promote clean air in Israeli bars, pubs, cafés and other indoor places is yet to be seen," they wrote in their article published in the just-published August/September issue of IMAJ, the Israel Medical Association Journal.
Rosen said that while her post-enactment data is not yet available, she has the feeling that some municipalities and local authorities around Israel are significantly better than others, even though all are obligated to enforce the law.
Attorney Amos Hausner, who heads the Israel Council for the Prevention of Smoking, agreed and noted that some municipalities have said openly that they don't intend to enforce the 10-month-old no-smoking law . . .
It's impossible to file lawsuits against all the municipalities that fail to enforce the law properly, thus as a last resort, Hausner intends to take the Israel Police - which has the ultimate responsibility for enforcing the law but claims to be "too busy" and has left the job to the municipalities and local authorities - to the High Court of Justice.
General Julius B. Richmond, MD, FAAP, a pediatrician and pioneer in child development and anti-tobacco education, died Sunday, July 27, 2008, of cancer at his home near Boston. He was 91.
Dr. Richmond served as President Carter's Assistant Secretary for Health and as U.S. Surgeon General from 1977 to 1981. As Surgeon General, Dr. Richmond reinvigorated tobacco control efforts through the release of the 1979 Surgeon General's Report presenting for the first time overwhelming scientific evidence of the multiple harmful effects of smoking. The American Academy of Pediatrics Julius B. Richmond Center of Excellence - a program dedicated to eliminating children's exposure to tobacco and secondhand smoke - is named in honor of Dr. Richmond's lifelong commitment to the health of children and families.
"Dr. Richmond was one of the giants in our field," . . .
Although he officially retired in 1988, Dr. Richmond continued to teach, write and mentor students and colleagues. He served as an expert witness in several historic class-action litigations against the tobacco industry and served as founding chair of the Medical Advisory Board of the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute (FAMRI). FAMRI, a not-for-profit medical research foundation, was established as a result of a class action suit brought against the tobacco industry on behalf of flight attendants exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke in airline cabins.
Dr. Julius Richmond, the pediatrician who helped create Project Head Start and later, as surgeon general, issued a 1979 report on the health risks of smoking that led to more informative warning labels on cigarette packs, died of cancer Sunday at his home near Boston. He was 91.
"Dr. Richmond was one of the giants in our field," said Dr. Renee R. Jenkins, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. "He was a wonderful role model for pediatric leaders in the U.S. and throughout the world." . . .
He formally retired in 1988 but continued to teach, write and do research. He also served as an expert witness in several class-action suits against the tobacco industry, including one by flight attendants.
"We are in the midst of the largest man-made epidemic in history, and that is lung cancer," he later said.
As many as 200 Inland volunteers could help medical researchers identify whether early screening helps cut lung-cancer risk among people with high exposure to secondhand smoke, such as flight attendants and restaurant workers.
Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage is one of more than 50 medical facilities worldwide involved in a first-ever study of nonsmokers who either have lived with smokers or worked in fields with high levels of secondhand smoke exposure.
Researchers hope the study, which will last at least five years, will convince insurance companies and policymakers that early detection of lung cancer and other diseases in people exposed to secondhand smoke could save lives. . . .
The study, headed by New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, is funded by an $8.7 million grant from the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute in Miami, Fla. . . .
Dr. Claudia Henschke of Weill Cornell Medical College did not return phone calls to discuss the secondhand smoke study.
Secondhand smoke in the home appears to induce markers for heart disease as early as the toddler years, researchers reported at the American Heart Association's 48th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention.
It has long been known that many forms of cardiovascular disease in adults are initiated and progress silently during childhood. Now researchers have found a young child's response to smoke may not just affect the respiratory system, but the cardiovascular system as well.
"This is the first study that looks at the response of a young child's cardiovascular system to secondhand smoke," said Judith Groner, M.D., lead author of the study, pediatrician and ambulatory care physician at Nationwide Children's Hospital and Research Institute in Columbus, Ohio.
Little is known about long-term adverse health consequences experienced by flight attendants exposed to secondhand smoke (SHS) during the time smoking was allowed on airplanes. We undertook this study to evaluate the association between accumulated flight time in smoky airplane cabins and respiratory tract diseases in a cohort of never smoking flight attendants. . . .
Conclusion
We observed a significant association between hours of smoky cabin exposure and self-reported reported sinusitis, middle ear infections, and asthma. Our findings suggest a dose-response between duration of SHS exposure and diseases of the respiratory tract. Our findings add additional evidence to the growing body of knowledge supporting the need for widespread implementation of clean indoor air policies to decrease the risk of adverse health consequences experienced by never smokers exposed to SHS.
This article is the first peer-reviewed publication of systematic measurements of OTS concentrations. The main conclusion from these data, that OTS levels can be substantial under certain conditions, is vital to the development of outdoor tobacco control policy. Because adequate information on OTS levels and human exposures has previously been lacking, the estimation of health risks associated with OTS has been hindered, and public discourse concerning OTS has been impaired. The present study also has shown that continuous, portable airborne particle monitors are suitable in OTS investigations across a range of locations and environmental conditions.
Now, Stanford University researchers have conducted the first in-depth study on how smoking affects air quality at sidewalk cafés, park benches and other outdoor locations. Writing in the May issue of the Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association (JAWMA), the Stanford team concluded that a non-smoker sitting a few feet downwind from a smoldering cigarette is likely to be exposed to substantial levels of contaminated air for brief periods of time.
"Some folks have expressed the opinion that exposure to outdoor tobacco smoke is insignificant, because it dissipates quickly into the air," said Neil Klepeis, assistant professor (consulting) of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and lead author of the study. "But our findings show that a person sitting or standing next to a smoker outdoors can breathe in wisps of smoke that are many times more concentrated than normal background air pollution levels." . . .
Unlike indoor tobacco smoke, which can persist for hours, the researchers found that outdoor smoke disappears rapidly when a cigarette is extinguished. "Our data also show that if you move about six feet away from an outdoor smoker, your exposure levels are much lower," Klepeis added. . . .
In the study, the researchers used portable electronic monitors to make precise measurements of toxic airborne particles emitted from cigarettes at 10 sites near the Stanford campus.
A Florida State University researcher who is developing methods for regenerating blood vessels damaged by secondhand tobacco smoke has received a fellowship award that could provide as much as $450,000 over five years for her to pursue new scientific approaches.
Feng Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher in the Florida A&M University-Florida State University College of Engineering, was selected by the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute (FAMRI) to receive a 2006-2007 FAMRI Young Clinical Scientist Award.