Tuesday 14 May 2013

Where but California ... staying in a hotel that provides smoking rooms can seriously damage your health

A new study warns non-smokers off using hotels that provide smoking rooms. Go for hotels that don't provide smoking rooms, because otherwise your health will be at risk.
Non-smokers should give hotels that allow smoking in certain rooms a wide berth, say the authors, and instead choose completely smoke free hotels.
The researchers analysed the surfaces and air quality of rooms for evidence of tobacco smoke pollution (nicotine and 3EP), known as third hand smoke, in a random sample of budget to mid-range hotels in San Diego, California.
The smoke gets into non-smoking rooms (self-closing fire doors notwithstanding) and of course hallways. They even tested the non-smoking guests.

Thanks to the BMJ blog for this live-saving information.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Time is running out for nicotine based scaremongering.

The was no mention of dietary nicotine in the MSM in 2007 but this week it's all over the place.

It's even on CBS


Eating nicotine-containing produce like peppers, tomatoes may lower Parkinson's risk

"While most people know that nicotine can be found in tobacco, low levels of the compound can be found in peppers, tomatoes and other members of the Solanaceae flowering plant family."
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57583731/eating-nicotine-containing-produce-like-peppers-tomatoes-may-lower-parkinsons-risk/

But they also contain Solanesol which I think could be a large part of the effect.


Rose



Ivan D said...

I note that the author of the paper is a psychologist. I could say more about him but my mother brought me up properly so I try not to be gratuitously unkind.

What the.... said...

The “study” is the latest conducted by the moron Georg Matt. Here’s an intro to the dishonest moron:
http://www.psychology.sdsu.edu/people/georg-matt/

There are a number of points that need to be highlighted concerning Matt’s or any other so-called “research” on “thirdhand smoke”. Firstly, there is no smoke. Typically considered are one or two residues (e.g., nicotine) – not peculiar to tobacco smoke – of what may have once been smoke. These few residues are chosen because they’re the only chemicals that can be measured, and then only at trace levels. The “research” is based on the approach that there is a relatively higher concentration of these chemicals in smoking-permitted rooms. Lost in the dross is that these chemicals are also found in smoking-banned rooms and that, at this baseline, the chemicals are at trace levels. The research attempts to lead the reader, i.e., propaganda, that a higher relative level of these chemicals that is only slightly higher than a trace-level baseline is “dangerous” or “hazardous”. Hence the second and very critical point – the research does not address hazard or health effects at all: It is not in a position to make any health claims about these relatively higher, although very low, chemical residues. If no hazard is indicated, then why do people need to protect themselves from all exposure which is contained in the headline? Yet, Matt is attempting to convince readers – through a masquerade of “scientific research” - that they do need protection, i.e., antismoking propagandist.

Here’s some more Matt trash from a few years ago:
http://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/news.aspx?s=72659
The article actually notes that “although health outcomes have not yet been studied”. Yet, both the article and study are replete with such baseless, inflammatory, and leading terms such as “pollutants”, “toxins”, “contamination”, “particular risk”. The article is entitled “Lingering Effects of Thirdhand Smoke”. Yet, there are no demonstrated “effects”.

This situation provides an opportunity to consider the messed-up state of academia. Matt is Chair of the Department of Psychology at San Diego State University. Yet, Matt is a behaviorist……. he wouldn’t have a clue about psychology. A behaviorist is only interested in the coercion of “right” behavior. An actual psychologist would be highly critical of inflammatory propaganda: It is an assault on mental health; it promotes irrational belief, fear, and hatred. But not to a behaviorist who has no interest whatsoever in accuracy of belief. The behaviorist’s only interest is in conditioning of “right” behavior. Messing with people’s minds through inaccurate beliefs to coerce “right” behavior is not problematic because, for behaviorism, mind does not exist – only behavior exists.

So, we have people with no psychological aptitude that dominate psychology departments. This is occurring worldwide. In many cases psychology departments have at least been renamed “behavioral sciences”. The interest of this “discipline” is how to get people to engage in the “right” behavior [according to physicalism].

But the situation at San Diego is even more perverse. The question could well be asked why Matt, a behaviorist, is generating the foundational “chemistry” research. It would seem that Matt is a rabid antismoker that is attempting to force a “line of enquiry”; those involved in chemistry don’t see “thirdhand smoke” as worthy of study. He also sponges from TRDRP, one of the funding pools created from the Master Settlement Agreement specifically intended for antismoking “research”:
http://www.trdrp.org/priorities/enviro.php

Anonymous said...

Interesting, this coming out of CA this week and seen also this week, on TV inside of SF, CA, but a new anti-smoking advertising campaign that would be broadcast statewide - they are now showing an outdoor scene from the close-up view of a lighted cigarette pummeling SHS at passerby's, then falling as a butt to the street, then falling into the sewer, then through the sewer pipe into the ocean - and all the while the voice-over announcer is talking in a low dreadful tone about the dangers of SHS and how cig ends leave "toxins" that once into the environment, destroy it forever. The new government paid public service ad ends with a puppy on the beach pulling back in fear from the discarded cig end whose trip from being smoked to being discarded to ending up at the ocean through the sewer, all shot close-up from the view-point of the cigarette. So I guess, it's the "cigarette's fault" and "it's so toxic" that they are actually pushing the third-hand-smoke fraud via this new advert showing up nightly on California TV screens state-wide in expensive highly viewed prime-time.

Jay said...

We need to give academics and journalists who publish this bollocks a wide berth...