Clearing The Air

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Was former Surgeon General Carmona ousted for his junk science conclusions in a June 2006 report?

From this story it appears that is the case:

So did you get pushed out because of the second-hand smoke issue?

There were a number of those editorials. To be honest with you, if I was, I would never know. If someone [in the administration] would have made a compelling case to stay, I would have thought about it. I had nobody tell me: you're out of here because you wrote that report. All I heard were complaints that some people in the administration were not happy.

And as Clearing the Air stated at the time, the "no safe level" argument is a blatant lie. OSHA puts forth a safe level of exposure, called permissible exposure level (pel), for all hazardous compounds. If we followed the argument that there is no safe level of exposure to hazardous chemicals we would have to declare the very air we breath as hazardous because of the carbon dioxide (CO2) naturally present. CO2 kills humans at a concentration of 20%.

As a matter of fact OSHA sets a (pel) for all the chemicals in secondhand smoke and according to American Cancer Society air quality testing, secondhand smoke is up to 25,000 times safer than OSHA permissible exposure limits.........ie. not a health hazard.

American Cancer Society air quality testing data. The American Cancer Society measured the air quality for secondhand smoke in several venues.

ACS tested by measuring the "marker" chemical in secondhand smoke -nicotine.* The results are shown above ranging from 20 -940 nanograms / cu. M. A nanogram is 10 (-9) of a gram or 0.000000001 of a gram which is also 0.000001 of a mg (milligram)

Full OSHA table here:

http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9992

The OSHA safe exposure level to airborne nicotine for an 8 hour per day, 40 hour per week is 0.5 mg/cu. M as per the partial OSHA table above.

So to determine what the American Cancer Society air quality testing really tells us, we compare the test results to the OSHA permissble exposure limits (pel).

OSHA safe level 0.5 mg divided by ACS result 20 nanograms, which is also 0.000020 of a mg. Thus, 0.5 /0.00002 = ACS secondhand smoke levels are 25,000 times safer than OSHA regulations (pel).

So the former surgeon general exercised poor judgment by claiming there is "no safe level" (a lie), and Carmona wasted a large sum of taxpayer money issuing a worthless report all in a feeble attempt to keep the smoking ban debate in the public forum. .........So yes, his resignation was a prudent decision, because his firing would have been justified.

-Thanks to Colin Grainger for the tip.

Additional information about Carmona's departure.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv30n1/v30n1-5.pdf