Tobacco.org

CARROLL: Secondhand smoke  

The EPA's data show no significant link between passive smoke and lung cancer. This is true only if you accept the tobacco industry's claim that an epidemiological study should demonstrate an increased risk of 100 percent to be significant. Even after lowering the standard from p=0.05 to p=0.1 (i.e., from a one in twenty to a one in ten chance of a spurious correlation), they were still able to get a relative risk of only 1.19. This number is significant according to epidemiologists Jonathan M. Samet and Thomas A. Burke of Johns Hopkins university. According to John Brignell, "risk ratios of greater than 3 are normally considered significant. One might even stretch a point and go down to 2, but never lower" (Sorry Wrong Number, p. 129). John is pushing for a standard even the tobacco industry might marvel at. The standard of a risk ratio of 2 or higher was pushed for the tobacco industry by Jim Tozzi, the force behind the data quality act, an act aimed at promoting the republican plan for the deregulation of America. If the tobacco industry had its way, it would be impossible to ban just about any environmental toxin, not just secondhand smoke. (see Chris Mooney's The Republican War On Science). . . .

It may not be statistically significant but it does not support the claim that the WHO study contradicts its own conclusions, nor does it support the claim that the study indicates no association between passive smoke and risk of lung cancer. [The results could be "consistent with risks considerably higher than generally accepted - the upper bound of the 95% confidence interval is a relative risk of 1.44 - whereas the generally accepted range is 1.1 to 1.3."* To see to what lengths the tobacco lobby and their frontmen will go to in their effort at discrediting studies, see this article from Lancet.]

Jump to full article »