Friday, November 21, 2008

German occupational health experts debunk passive smoking fraud

Typical myths of the anti-smoking movement are the alleged dangers to hospitality staff by passive smoking and the claim by an Italian “scientist” that tobacco smoke leads to more toxins in the air than fumes from diesel engines.

This propaganda was given a reality check by the German Berufsgenossenschaft Nahrungsmittel und Gaststätten (BGN), the Employer's Liability Insurance Association for the Food and Hospitality Sector, a compulsory body for all companies in that area, controlled by trade unions and employers’ organizations alike.

Last year, their scientific and prevention department took a closer look at the findings of tobacco control researcher Giovanni Invernizzi (and colleagues) saying that ETS causes more particulate matter than an ecodiesel engine running idle. This study has already been exposed by FORCES International in a thorough theoretical analysis a few years ago. The German scientists of the BGN did something else: they reproduced the experiment under equal circumstances. But they used various different measurement instruments. Their conclusion: With suitable instruments, the pollution by an idling diesel engine is much greater than the one by cigarettes. There is only one instrument that leads to another result: the one Invernizzi used, an Aerosol Monitor unable to detect a large part of the ultrafine particulate matter from the car.

The BGN analysis is now available in English (3 pages).

Furthermore, the occupational health researchers from Mannheim scrutinized alleged risk elevation for lung cancer among exposed hospitality employees. Once again, they did own empirical work, using data by health insurance providers about millions of employees in Germany, comparing the hospitality worker to peoples working in other branches of trade . Their conclusion:
“In contrast to the estimated data in the “calculated” models, this analysis of real patients’ data
showed results that prove a lot less lung cancers, and heart and bronchial diseases of
employees in this sector, compared to other sectors. There was no distinction between
smokers and non-smokers.“

If reality does not support epidemiologist charlatanry, then reality must be wrong.

In more general terms, the scientists critized the literature on passive smoking and lung cancer.
“The results of international studies vary considerably, to an extent almost
unprecedented in other fields of epidemiology.
The consequences of the usage of incomparable methods in the individual studies are not scientifically nor socially defensible.
The quality of meta-studies and overview studies is questionable because they cannot
be better than the bases upon which they rely.
It is astonishing how uncritically authors of meta-studies and overview studies deal with
recent studies from the literature and how airily they draw far-reaching conclusions.”

This analysis (7 pages) is also available in English.


The BGN also questions the invented figure of 3.301 annual deaths by passive smoking in Germany, the antis’ propaganda myth no. 1. In a scientific conference, Prof. Ulrich Keil, Big Pharma friend, tobacco control alchemist, and the inventor of these non-existing deaths, was faced with critical questions by the head of the BGN Prevention department, Prof. Dr. Romano Grieshaber. Keil reacted typically: He immediately fled from the conference room.

Speaking the truth makes you unpopular with anti-tobacco, so Prof. Grieshaber became the target of the usual witch-hunt. Behind the scenes, people like Keil tried to remove him from his office at the BGN, the WHO Collaborating Centre on Tobacco Controll in Germany attacked him, using the “well-known defense mechanisms like defamation, emotionalization, and the allegation of dependences” (official BGN paper).

We hope that the voices of scientific decency will not be silenced.

5 comments:

jockeyboymar said...

Is that the best you can offer?

Suppose you are right, and against all the odds passive smoking is proven to be harmless.

So what. SO WHAT??!!??

101,000 active smokers are slaughtered by the habit every year in Germany alone.

Isn't that enough?

Isn't that totally insane?

Couldn't you people find something a little less pointless to do?

Christoph said...

Dear Alan,

the passive smoking fraud is the legals basis for smoking bans and serves as a justification for the discrimination against smokers in general.
That's why it's extremely important.


About active smoking:

There are no serious figures about the "deaths from smoking". The 101,101 you mentioned is some sort of an average of all kinds of invented figures for the German population.
In fact, there is no evidence in any individual case about whether or not, let alone to what extent, smoking tobacco has contributed to a lethal disease.
The average life expectancy in Germany or elsewhere in the Western World does not indicate that there is any problem whatsoever with tobacco consumption.

Furthermore, it's the smokers' individual choice. And none of your business.

Klaus K said...

"101,000 active smokers are slaughtered by the habit every year in Germany alone."

Slaughtered? Funny. Anyway, it is their choice. And then what?

Will you remove that choice? Will you prevent people from making a perfectly informed choice? And how?

You seem to forget, that your body doesn't belong to the Führer anymore ...

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gasdoc said...

This is more serious than you could imagine even without a conspiracy theory. It says passive smoking can't hurt non smokers. I know that and plenty more do and this is evidence.