Jump to full article: St. Cloud (MN) Times, 2007-07-16
Author: Barbara Banaian
Intro: This letter is in response to the editorial, "Tobacco lobby thwarts OSHA crackdown," Sunday, July 15, 2007, by Steve and Alice Schneider.
Steve and Alice Schneider repeat the lie that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke. This violates a basic principle of toxicology that dose makes the poison. . . .
We don't know how much secondhand smoke a nonsmoker inhales as she works near smokers; it may be less than one cigarette a day. Perhaps that worker should smoke a few just as a preventive measure, if secondhand smoke is as dangerous as proponents of smoking bans say.
If regulatory agencies such as the Office of the Surgeon General are going to issue such irresponsible reports, we should be glad that legislators provide oversight; that is what a potential cutoff of funding for an OSHA regulation by a few regulators is. And of course anti-smoking groups will sue for eliminating workplace smoking. Rather than work through the political process and through good science, they instead ask an unelected judge to do their dirty work for them.
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