Following the publication of an article in The Lancet it's been widely reported that 1 in 100 deaths worldwide is caused by passive smoking. For instance, Chris Steele's Family GP website put it like this ...
The shocking toll of smoking on the health of non-smokers has been revealed by a world-wide study showing that passive smoking is linked to 1 in 100 deaths worldwide - with a third of them being children.
The research found that around 603,000 deaths worldwide were due to second hand smoke. By far the largest cause was heart disease, which accounted for 379,000 of those deaths. The study is the first to assess the global impact of second hand smoke.
Undertaken by the World Health Organization, the study looked at data from nearly 200 countries. All told, 40% of children, 33% of non-smoking men and 35% non-smoking women were exposed to second-hand smoke in 2004, the researchers found.
The effects of second-hand smoke are particularly dangerous to children, especially in poorer countries in Africa and South East Asia, were the combination of smoke exposure and infectious diseases lead to over 160,000 deaths due to respiratory infections.
In addition, the lungs of children in homes with smokers may develop more slowly than those of children raised in smoke-free homes.
Commenting on the survey result, British Heart Foundation spokeswoman Betty McBride called for more government action: "These figures should make smokers stop and think about the impact they’re having on other people’s health, particularly children’s. They should also serve as encouragement to government to go further and promote smoke free homes and cars."
She also noted that these figures show that the UK ban on smoking in public places was the right thing to do: "Breathing in other people’s tobacco smoke has deadly consequences. This study is ample proof that we were right to introduce the ban on smoking in public places in this country."
This is absolute garbage, of course, and a prime example of the misuse of statistics. There has not been one single scientifically proven case of death by passive smoking, ever, anywhere in the world. That's not to say it doesn't happen, of course, simply that it has not been proven in a clinical, scientifically valid way with observed data, control groups etc.
For the World Health Organisation to misuse statistics – and old statistics at that, dating back six years – is at best disingenuous and at worst fraudulent. The statistics were, by their own admission, gathered all over the world with no control over their quality and accuracy, and so far as I can tell little attempt to harmonise the parameters between different studies.
Common sense suggests that households in which there are high levels of passive smoking will also be those with unhealthy lifestyles, lower-than-average wealth and poor diets. They probably enjoy poorer healthcare, take less exercise, may live in polluted environments and probably have greater dependency on alcohol and narcotics. They may indulge in more unsafe sex. Poor families in Africa are famously exposed to high levels of indoor pollution from open fires with no chimneys. As long ago as 2004 the BBC was reporting that in the UK most smoking-related deaths occurred in poorer areas.
The dangers of passive smoking will only be statistically proven when someone does a single, large study of population groups from similar backgrounds, living in similar environments, with similar lifestyles, levels of wealth, healthcare provision, diets etc. There must be a proper control group of non-smoking households. Until the WHO pulls its finger out and organises such a study instead of cobbling together scare stories from research done by others, the jury remains firmly out.
There is another way, of course. Take two identical twins, lock them both up for life, expose one of them to passive smoking and the other to fresh air, and see which one dies first. It could be the only useful thing Jedward ever did.
The GOS says: Please don't write in telling me all this self-righteous twaddle about smoking being a disgusting habit and everyone ought to do what you say because it's for their own good. As a non-smoker myself, I'm not remotely interested.
What does interest me is persuading people in positions of power, responsibility and influence to recognise, and tell, the truth for a change and stop believing they can pull the wool over our eyes with sloppy science and lazy logic.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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