Clearing The Air

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

When does an issue rise to a level of health hazard requiring government action?

Clearing the Air believes that if someone is going to goto lawmakers and claim we need a law for x,y, or z because x,y, or z is a health hazard. Then the initial hurdle ought to be to first prove that x,y, or z is a health hazard.

And OSHA standards ought to be the gauge if the argument is that we need to protect employees' health....because OSHA is the agency that protects employee health regarding every potentially hazardous workplace situation. If actual x,y, or z levels are below OSHA guidelines ie. safer than OSHA guidelines, then no organization has the right to bring that particular issue before lawmakers to demand an ordinance or legislation.

And in the case of secondhand smoke the ALA, ACS, AHA, AMA, ANR, ASH, etc. etc. and anyone else that recieved Nicoderm funding thru RWJF would be driven out of city hall & state capitols for wasting lawmakers' time on an issue which clearly does not rise to health hazard levels.....and only serves to financially benefit the pharmaceutical nicotine industry which funded such efforts.

St. Louis Park, MN. Environmental Health Department and OSHA data prove secondhand smoke conentrations indoors are 500-15 times SAFER than OSHA regulations. Not a health hazard.

The American Cancer Society and OSHA data prove secondhand smoke conentrations indoors are 25,000-532 times SAFER than OSHA regulations. Also not a health hazard.

However all the non-profit groups which lobby for smoking bans are heavily funded by pharmaceutical nicotine interests, who have a financial interest in seeing that lawmakers ban the use of their competitors' product -tobacco nicotine.

Smoking bans are nothing more than one industry....drug manufacturers (Nicoderm maker Johnson & Johnson Company and its political wing, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation RWJF) using the force of government to give them a competitive advantage in the marketplace......while masquerading the the secondhand smoke issue as one of health "hazard"........... clearly an exaggeration if not an outright lie.