Effect of passive smoking on health

"Environmental Tobacco Smoke" is, first off, a term coined by the
tobacco industry to minimize the severity of the by-product of smokers.

Score one for the tobacco industry.

My mother lived with a smoker for a few months short of 50 years - a
smoker, my father died of lung cancer months before their golden wedding
anniversary.

Score two for the tobacco industry.

My mother and we live daily with her emphysema - caused by exposure
to tobacco smoke pollution (well, that's if her team of doctors are to be
believed). Other risk factors and the remote possibility she has alpha 1-
antitrypsin type of emphysema were eliminated. She has no history of
exposure to vinyl chloride, no family history of COPD and no other
predisposing factors aside from living with a smoking spouse - something
Enstrom and Kabat claim to be inconsequential - to have resulted in this
devastating condition causing her to suffocate, slowly, to death.

I will tell her of the tobacco-funded conclusions that living with a
smoking spouse (who did not know what the tobacco companies kept secret
about the harm caused by exposure to tobacco smoke pollution) did not
cause her to become semi-invalid, her very life dependent on plastic
tubing attached to a cylinder of oxygen.

I will also advise my mother she is "statistically insignificant" the
next time I find it necessary to call an ambulance to administer requisite
care when she has collapsed, because her tobacco-smoke damaged lungs no
longer breathe for her. Her care and medications cost the government of
British Columbia over $1,000 each month. I can only hope administrators
will be gratified to hear exposure to tobacco smoke pollution is not
responsible for this inconvenient expense.

Despite your cover, your editorial and your article, nobody of
discretion can ever be expected to believe tobacco smoke pollution is
harmless.

Score three for the tobacco industry.

Competing interests:  
None declared