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Occasional smoking and Richard Doll

I suggest both of these are important to this subject.

Sir Richard Doll's "British Doctors Study" the study that proved the increased risk of lung cancer, concludes that "on average those who smoke until age 30 have no excess mortality, those who smoke until age 40 lose 1 year, those who smoke until 50 lose 4 years, and those who smoke until age 60 lose 7 years". http://en.wikipedia.org/British_Doctors_Study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC437139/ http://www.who.int/docstore/bulletin/pdf/issue1/smokingand.pdf?ua=1

On Desert Island Discs in 2001, Sir Richard Doll, the man who proved the incontrovertible causal link between active smoking and lung cancer, said: "The effect of other people smoking in my presence is so small it doesn't worry me."

The risk of lung cancer according to Doll's groundbreaking study 1950, table 14.

No smoking- 50 in 1 million = 0.00005% (1 non smoker in 20000)

1 to 4 cigarettes per day- 307 in 1 million = 0.000307% (1 light smoker in 3257)

50+ cigarettes per day- 3344 in 1 million = 0.003344% (1 heavy smoker in 300)

IF YOU CONSIDER THESE FIGURES, THE ACTUAL CHANCES OF LUNG CANCER ARE SMALL!

In a pan European study the effects of occasional smoking were studied with no significant results

The effect of occasional smoking on smoking-related cancers

Bjerregaard BK, Raaschou-Nielsen O, Sørensen M, Frederiksen K, Tjønneland A, Rohrmann S, Linseisen J, Bergman MM, Boeing H, Sieri S, Palli D, Tumino R, Sacerdote C, Bueno-de-Mesquita HB, Büchner FL, Gram IT, Braaten T, Lund E, Hallmans G, Agren A, Riboli E (December 2006). "The effect of occasional smoking on smoking-related cancers: in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)". Cancer Causes Control 17 (10): 1305–9

http://en.wikipedia.org/Health_effects_of_tobacco "A 2006 European study on occasional smoking published findings that the risk of the major smoking-related cancers for occasional smokers was 1.24 times that of those who have never smoked at all but the result was not statistically significant. (For a confidence interval of 95%, this data showed an incidence rate ratio of 0.80 to 1.94.)"

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10552-006-0068-9

Article is cartoonishly biased – we need cleaner science on Misplaced Pages

This article is most politically biased science article I've yet seen on Misplaced Pages. We have a serious problem on Misplaced Pages of science pages being hijacked by political activists. It makes Misplaced Pages much less credible.

The section Controversy Over Harm has the following subsections:

6.1 Industry-funded studies and critiques 6.2 Tobacco industry response 6.3 US racketeering lawsuit against tobacco companies

I assume I don't need to explain how absurdly biased and one-sided this is.

The Wang, et al study is a very high-quality study and avoids the problem of recall bias. It found no evidence of increased lung cancer risk except in women who live with a smoker for more than 30 years. I just added it earlier today and another editor deleted the sentence and rewrote it to spin it as "prolonged exposure increases risk" or something like that, deleting the fact that it's only people who live with a smoker for more than 30 years. This is a ridiculous, irresponsible approach to science.

We also need to abandon the dichotomous oversimplification of risk and actually specify risks. "Increases risk" is extremely misleading when the risk is a very low probability. We need more rigor and more statistics knowledge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BlueSingularity (talk • contribs) 00:59, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Political activists like the Surgeon General, IARC and World Health Organization? They all state similar conclusions. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:10, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, "increases risk" is incredibly vague, and does not indicate statistical significance. A study run by someone who expects a certain conclusion may point to "increased risk" by only paying attention to statistical differences that support their opinion, despite infinitesimal statistical significance. This was part of the US District Court's issue with the EPA study that the court threw out, claiming it was "cherry picked." Vacating that judgment was only done on the basis that the study carried no regulatory weight, not a refutation of the study's court-acknowledged lack of scientific basis.

This article shows it's bias from the beginning, starting with such unscientific language as this: "The health risks of second-hand smoke are a matter of scientific consensus," despite the fact that the legislatively most important large study done on the issue, that concluded SHS was a risk factor for various things, was thrown out by a District Court for making conclusions before research, in the court's own words, "EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before research had begun" in addition to significant other violations of sound scientific procedure and the EPA's own policies. The "scientific consensus" statement, which defines the nonobjective tone which continues through the entire article, is refuted as well by the fact that there have been several major scientific studies done which refute the causal link between SHS and cancer or other maladies. That the author may not like the political or industrial funding behind such studies does not exclude them from being part of the community of scientists who create "scientific consensus," nor does it necessarily make the scientists of whose conclusions the author approves any less influenced by political interests. The opposite statement could just as easily be made, depending upon one's view of who has more scientific credibility. Such a blanket statement simply should not be made in a forum that expects to have any credibility. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.28.66.163 (talk) 18:34, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I entirely agree with the above editor. This article is obviously heavily biased. SmokeyTheCat 19:04, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Suggest you review the cited sources. Tong & Glantz are pretty direct about it. LeadSongDog come howl! 22:04, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

The article needs re-writing by someone who hasn't swallowed the currently fashionable and very obvious anti-smoking zeitgeist. The Greeks smoke twice as much as the British and live just as long. The Japanese smoke nearly twice as much and live longer. And that's active smoking. So how can passive smoking be anything but completely trivial? Anyone interested can confirm what I write by comparing the tables here on Smoking by Country with Smoking by Life Expectancy. I don't have links on this but it's still true. There is so much anti-smoking propaganda that is has now become apparently the norm but propaganda it remains. Misplaced Pages should be above this but sadly it presently isn't on this issue. SmokeyTheCat 01:39, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Ref summary

First of all we should generally not use primary sources per WP:MEDRS so maybe we should trim

Second the source says "Among NS, prolonged passive adult home exposure tended to increase lung cancer risk" which is better summarized as "Prolonged secondhand smoke exposure also increases the risk of lung cancer" than "However, more recent research has found little or no harm from secondhand smoke except for those who had lived with a smoker for at least 30 years." Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:00, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I support efforts to add more of the extensive documentation of harm caused by passive smoking, in spite of the well-documented campaign to suppress and confuse evidence about this issue. Reify-tech (talk) 22:09, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

What 'well-documented campaign' ? I don't know where you live, Reify-tech, but here in the UK there is a blanket ban on smoking in all public enclosed spaces and despite the fact that 6,000 pubs have closed because of the ban, benefiting no-one, and not the slightest talk of moderating the ban by any of the legislators. Indeed there is deranged talk of increasing the ban to include open-air public spaces likes parks and squares. ASH, the largest but not the only anti-smoking lobbying group, employs twenty people full-time to continue to churn ever more anti-smoking propaganda while Forest the only group which represents the UK's ten million smokers has but a single employee. SmokeyTheCat 09:33, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Would help if you would provide refs. The talk page is not a soap box. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:36, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes please see WP:NOTAFORUM... Misplaced Pages articles need to document what's happening but article Talk pages are not for discussing personal opinions about article topics. Zad68 02:14, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

The whole article is a soapbox for the currently fashionable Healthist anti-smoking hysteria. SmokeyTheCat 10:52, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 16 August 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. The ENGVAR/RETAIN concerns have not been adequately addressed for there to be a move. Jenks24 (talk) 20:32, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Passive smoking → Secondhand smoke – "Secondhand smoke" is the primary name for this topic used by the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, the American Lung Association and the CDC. Everymorning (talk) 18:28, 16 August 2015 (UTC) Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 12:13, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

• There may be WP:ENGVAR issues here. —  AjaxSmack  21:35, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• Might could be but there's no consensus in the archives and the current article uses both American and British English. If we're establishing a consensus now, my own preference would be to resolve the tie in favor of American English, as spoken and read by a much wider audience in general and on Misplaced Pages in particular. The objective thing to do per WP:ENGVAR, though, is to see who got in the first edit. Looks like that was the Brits. So it should remain at passive smoking unless enough Brits also use secondhand smoke that we can find MOS:COMMONALITY. Certainly SHS is the preferred American name for the phenomenon, as documented by User:Everymorning. Can anyone see what the British National Health Service or Lancet uses? — LlywelynII 01:02, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
  On NHS's "Smokefree" site, this page uses "second-hand smoke" with a hyphen and this one uses "secondhand smoke" without one. No "passive smoking" in sight. So... good to go? — LlywelynII 01:09, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

• I'll leave it to others but I don't see a problem with the current title. It's more accurate — secondhand sounds like something sold at a rummage sale — and we should note WP:TITLECHANGES. —  AjaxSmack  02:45, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

• Support. As above. — LlywelynII 01:09, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose "passive smoke" used x2 as much as "second handsmoke" on n-gram , and in my locality is also used more commonly. So per "common name", oppose --Tom (LT) (talk) 10:49, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Tom (LT) By making the Ngram search case insensitive and by extending the time frame to 2008, the results favour secondhand smoke. However I would be interested to know if people in the US have heard of passive smoking. I don't remember hearing usage of secondhand smoke. GregKaye 04:19, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

• Comment There are 611,000 google results for "secondhand smoke" and 714,000 for "second-hand smoke" but only 486,000 for "passive smoking". In addition, there are only 3,060 Google News results for passive smoking but 11,000 for second-hand smoke and 13,100 for secondhand smoke. Thus COMMONNAME would seem to support a move from the current title, in my opinion. Everymorning (talk) 12:18, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:ENGVAR. Passive smoking is used by Cancer Research UK , the NHS , BBC Ash , etc. Zarcadia (talk) 13:24, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

• Comment It seems that the BBC at least sometimes does use "secondhand smoke", as does the NHS's Smokefree website. Everymorning (talk) 13:31, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose per MOS:ENGVAR / MOS:RETAIN. RGloucester — ☎ 03:14, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
• Comment The United States often uses their own terminology separate from that of the rest of the world. This is similar to how they use miles while the rest of the world uses metric. Sometimes we use American terminology others global terminology. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:23, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

• The "mile" isn't US terminology - it was inherited from the UK, who also still use miles. Speccy4Eyes (talk) 06:24, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:ENGVAR and WP:RETAIN. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:18, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
• Support The article was originally started in American English, if you look through the archives, it comes off of the article on tobacco smoking, which was also started in American English. The article has always thus been in American English. Cheers, ~~ipuser 90.192.101.114 (talk) 23:27, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
• Support per nom and WP:COMMONNAME. Calidum 14:07, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
• Support' per nom, common name, and accuracy. Randy Kryn 20:19, 24 2015 (UTC)
• Comment WP:RETAIN does not seem to apply here, per 90.192.101.114 above. I am inclined to support "secondhand smoke" (or "secondhand smoking"), as I have never heard it called "passive smoking"; but of course WP:ENGVAR. The redirect "secondhand smoke" was created on the same date by the same user as "passive smoking" (originally also a redirect), on June 9, 2004. "Second hand smoking" was created not long after on September 22, 2004, by another user. — the Man in Question (in question) 22:19, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

90.192.101.114 has no point. The article started at passive smoking. Passive smoking is the default term, and should not be changed, per ENGVAR. RGloucester — ☎ 00:35, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose as the current title was the title first used.Speccy4Eyes (talk) 06:28, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:ENGVAR and WP:RETAIN, Pincrete (talk) 08:18, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. "Passive smoking" being twice as commonly used as "Secondhand smoke" with "Secondhand smoking" not even featuring.. And a big WP:TITLECHANGES. There is nothing wrong with the current title. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:58, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

• Comment When I use the ngram tool and look only at uses since 1950, it seems that "secondhand smoke" is used somewhat more often than "passive smoking", which is, in turn, used more often than "environmental tobacco smoke". It also appears that this arrangement has existed since approximately 1997. Similarly, there are 1,820 Google Books results for "secondhand smoke" and only 1,540 for "passive smoking". Everymorning (talk) 18:46, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

FCTC

I question whether we should be using the FCTC source to support the statement in the lead that secondhand smoke causes disease. The reason is that it doesn't actually appear to say anything about secondhand smoke specifically, but rather about tobacco use in general. I think that instead, we should use the sources that explicitly say that secondhand smoke is harmful, e.g. the Surgeon General, IARC, etc. Should no one object to this I will remove the FCTC source from the lead. Everymorning (talk) 18:25, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Page 8 says "Parties recognize that scientific evidence has unequivocally established that exposure to tobacco smoke causes death, disease and disability." Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:50, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 November 2015

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Secondhand Smoke can not only cause lung cancer,stroke and heart disease but make your overall health make a turn for the worse.Due to the fact that a lot of second-hand smoke being inhaled day in and day out,we need to avoid this hazardous smoke at all costs in order to keep a healthy bright future with no toxic chemicals. If more people were informed on how negative second smoking is then they would try to avoid it as much as possible. Individuals whom are exposed to this smoke need to take all things into consideration as something so small can be fixed by just avoiding a situation by leaving the smoker. CourtneyLT (talk) 06:03, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Cannolis (talk) 06:11, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

2013 Stanford study on the impact of passive smoking on lung cancer among women

In 2013 the Journal of the National Cancer Institute published a study from a team at Stanford University which made world wide news. The study, by a large number of authors headed by Ange Wang, followed up a database of 76,304 women compiled in the 1990s, and found that while current and former smokers recorded much higher rates of lung cancer than non-smokers in the ensuing 15 years, there was no evidence that exposure to second-hand smoke led to a statistically significant increase in rates of lung cancer, other than for women who had been exposed to smoke in their home for 30 years or more. This was a startling finding, and an important one given the size of the database it drew on, and the fact that the NCI itself had published the study. I looked up this article on Misplaced Pages to find out the considered reactions of expert opinion to the study, and was astonished that in this long article there seemed to be no reference to the study at all. This is a form of censorship which is completely alien to the spirit of Misplaced Pages (I speak as a regular donor). I don't look up Misplaced Pages to read propaganda, however well-intentioned. I look to Misplaced Pages to tell me the facts, but this article seems to ignore the scientific debate and present only one side, one version of "the facts". I can only agree with the comments made by others on the talk page about this article. It is biased. It is unscientific: with good intentions, no doubt, but Misplaced Pages exists to promote knowledge, not good intentions. This is a lapse of Misplaced Pages's standards.

The study is entitled: "Active and passive smoking in relation to lung cancer incidence in the Women's Health Intiative Observational Study prospective cohort". It was presented to the June 2013 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, and published later that year in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (which unfortunately is not accessible from the institute's webpage). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.11.146.49 (talk) 07:06, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

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