No Smoking Ban

a few questions tony.1 = do you drive a car ?...2= do you use aerosoles ? ..3= do you use a mobile phone ?

 

yes, no (or at least I avoid where possible) and of course (though I don't peraonlly believe that mobiles are dangerous, low frequency electromagnetics isnt my specialty but I havent seen anything convincing or indeed vaguely worrying, though I do play it safe and text where possible just in case).

But none of the things you've stated are particularly dangerous. Car fumes, I wouldnt make a habbit of breathing in car fumes. But unless your in a city centre (something I do avoid) your unlikely to do yourself any real harm unless you make a regular habbit of taking drags from your exhaust pipe. Its a similar story with aerosols, very bad for ozone (incidently ozone is very bad for humans) but they diffuse into quite low concentrations quite quickly. As for things like deodorant, they're fairly mundane things (isobutane, propane) again I wouldnt drink it but in low concentrations unlikely to do you any major harm. With most of the simple organic solvents the main problem is liver damage caused by prolonged exposure. Some like methanol are a little worse because the liver can't pass them and they can build up in the system. As for mobile phones im sceptical their is any real problem there, certainly the only evidence is random hype caused by other random hype. That said its never a bad idea to text where possible just incase but microwaves have been used for years and no one has complained so far. They are very low energy waves if they were found to be dangerous they would be unique as no other low frequency wave is thought to be dangerous.

Cigarettes however contain chemicals classified as by the WHO as class 1 (a known human carcinogen). I've had a quick look on the net and I can't find an exact number but it seems that there are around 40 known or suspected carcinogenic chemicals. I wouldn't buy food that conatined them, I wouldnt buy drink that contained them, I dont even fancy working with some them in a lab. Why then would I want to stick them in my mouth?

 

fair enough.guess i was a bit put out by your use of the word idiot. people have smoked all of there lives "and have lived to a ripe old age tony. to suggest people who smoke are idiots (your opinion) is a bit unfair ( my opinion). for instance i would suggest people who work in chemical factories that make bombs "that are far more dangerous than ciggarettes are idiots.(my opinion) . picking on smokers is one thing " but come on tony" next time you open a carton of supposedly pure orange ( read the label) . only recently a batch of apple juice had to be taken off the shelves of a supermarket " as it was discovered that their was a cancer causing chemical additive added . glad i have/nt drank that apple juice " sorry for the people who had consummed it. sorry for going off topic slightly " but these days who knows what sort of chemicals people are putting in their bodies (without realising it) me included. anyway back to bashing the smokers............

 

Smokers in my family dont have a history of living very long, but I think thats genetic, there are some genotypes where smoking is fatal pretty much. I think my family is one of those either that or we're just really unlucky. I don't worry about eating or drinking the same chemicals as go in cigarettes because I think im right in saying they're illegal in food and some of the most harmful chemicals only appear when burnt, such as hydrogen cyanide. Granted small quanitites, but some of the stuff that comes out of cigarettes is really nasty stuff, I dont think people always appreciate that this really is different to the stuff you might get in cheap sausages or a 19p/litre bottle of cola. As a general rule I dont buy any product that admits to being lethal, if I was walking through a supermarket buying milk I would avoid the bottle that says contains hydrogen cyanide, but hey thats just me. Perhaps not everyone has my sense of self preservation.

As for mobile phones light is in contact with my ears all the time ans at a significantly higher wavelength than microwaves yet thats never given me a tumour yet. As a gneral rule the dnagerous stuff is ionising radiation, that where the EM wave has enough energy to break a chemical bond by freeing an electron if this happens to DNA your body can go south quite quickly. However these are X-rays and gamma rays, by the time you get to UV they're not powerful enough to do this. UV is still harmful because it is absorbed by chemical bonds which can break and re-form again unhealthy but organic matter absorbs UV very strongly which is why usually only the skin gets burnt, incidently blue light can do the same thing but it needs ot be more intense. But microwaves are far less energetic and dont have the energy to alter any chemicals. The possible mechanism for microwaves being harmful is due to the fact that they are absorped by water. Almost all unregistered comms (mobiles, wifi, microwaves ovens (although not stricly comms), bluetooth (I think)) use roughly the same frequency becuase it is far too strongly absorbed to sell to radio stations. When you hold the handset to the ear then water inside the skull will absorb the microwaves, the upshot being the temperature rises slightly (very slightly not so much that you'd notice). Whether this causes any harm is anyones guess, there is so far no evidence that it does and this theory has really only been put forward to keep paranoid schools mums suitably highly strung. Given that the body absorbs a huge flux of microwaves each day from the sun im a skeptic but like MMR when the paranoid mother starts worrying what can you do, perhaps she should calm down and have a fag.

 

a non smoking ban seems like a good idea in certain places, but then if you think about it we all know smoking is bad for us, we also know that car fumes are bad as well, and other things we use but dont achally need so what are they going to do ban all these things as well, car fumes for example kill as well, and can give you cancer etc.