Health and Sport Committee concealed evidence in petition hearing

Last Tuesday, 22 January, the Health and Sport committee took less than six minutes (180:45 minutes in) to dismiss a petition that took months to research and several exchanges of emails with helpful Petitions Committee admin staff in order to get the wording to maximum effect.

It is quite clear that the committee staff were reading off the Scottish Government script (the briefing written by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, which includes the best tobacco control fairy tales in its summary of the facts), including such beauties as the heart attack drops and similar miracles brought about excusively by smoking bans. This is what appears to have swayed them – the conviction that reducing the passive smoke exposure of workers has led to clear improvements in general public health, and the equally hard-to-believe scenario presented by Richard Simpson MSP that the argument as to whether air cleaning technology could ever be able to clean smoke from a room had been settled for all eternity in 2001.

Gil Paterson's position is patently ridiculous – admitting that ventilation improves 'every day', and yet it will never be safe to expose anyone to smoke. He also explains the government's position on passive smoke in terms of pointing out to the public that freedom doesn't mean being able to damage other people: a conclusion that is neither relevant nor illuminating in the circumstances. Claiming that smoke 'must pass by you before it gets out' is another indicator that Paterson has not noticed how far air cleaning technology has moved.

The fact is that second-hand smoke is a red herring in the air quality issue. No ventilation equipment can operate unless it meets criteria set out by OSHA and its member organisations in Europe. The criteria are based on the presence of measurable chemical compounds during eight-hour shifts, regardless of whether secondary smoke is present.

Such indoor air quality standards feature in studies by Professor Andrew Geens, who refers to recognised occupational exposure limits throughout his work. This work was submitted as evidence to the petition along with substantial additional material. This evidence was introduced at the meeting itself by Aileen McLeod MSP on behalf of F2C (Scotland) member Bill Gibson, but none of the committee wanted the opportunity to scrutinise this evidence.

They voted instead to close the petition, effectively burying the evidence.

Safe levels of secondary smoke possible?

As a non-scientist I'm not particularly keen on reading technical pieces about chemistry or air quality but I was intrigued by this piece on an experiment in Staffordshire, where an environmental officer said that a study 'found a child [in a car] inhales three times the amount of smoke that would be considered safe to inhale over the course of a day'?: previously discussed here.


It is part of the faith of anti-smoking authorities the world over that there is no safe level of secondary smoke. Google the phrase and read about it being quoted everywhere in the world. But inevitably the protest arose that 'no safe level' was scientifically nonsensical and represents only a value judgement on the act of smoking itself.  


A measurable level of toxicity in the air can be dealt with. Air cleaning systems improve all the time: they are more sophisticated than creaking fans in the ceiling. But the anti-smokers have never wanted the problem to be dealt with rationally. Even though smoke is not as hazardous as other substances in the working environment it is not an industrial by-product, so can be excluded by means of prohibition and really because there is no safe level, only a ban will eradicate exposure. Any other toxin can be dealt with by calm efficiency, but ETS (secondary smoke) has magic qualities that allow it to evade effective control.


This piece provides an account of an OSHA measure of secondary smoke achieved by measuring nicotine only, rather than compounding it with measurements of formaldehyde and benzene, which form part of background pollution. Unfortunately the piece, though entitled 'OSHA sets safe level of second hand smoke', fails to link to OSHA itself, which is rather odd.  Yes, it's from a pipe smoking web site but I found it informative.


This famous table ('The Dose Makes The Poison') gives a breakdown of toxins found in smoke, and their toxicity.


Surely it is essential to uphold the notion that all risks are measurable, and that only by establishing a safe level of any risk is it possible to deal with it. 'No safe level' implies that something kills on impact. Deadly substances have to be contained and isolated if contact with them presents a clear danger to human life. Secondary smoke has formed the backdrop of life in the licensed trade and informal social life and many workplaces for generations and clearly doesn't fall into this category, since our elderly people are living longer than ever. 


Anyone who wants people to fear the impact of secondary smoke, when there are so many airborne chemicals resulting from the industrial-scale incineration of minerals, is guilty of shameless scaremongering, and enormous social and economic damage.