While predisposed (for obvious reasons) to a high degree of skepticism with respect to this latest effort by zealous health-purists (aka “Nazis”) to thoroughly demonize smoking and exterminate the last vestiges of the tobacco habit from existence, the claims being made here seem rather dubious at best.
I especially love the imaginatively rendered depictions of toxic residue on household furniture and car interiors in this piece. Presumably, this high-tech conjuring is intended to convince viewers beyond all possible doubt that this newly discovered phenomenon is actually “real” and not just tenuous hyperbole. Also, pay close attention to the expressions “we know” that go completely unchallenged. Urgh.
That woman’s voice and hair gave me cancer, and I have the PowerPoint slides to prove it.
We’ve always known that.
I should be hugging more of my enemies
Yes, that’s it. We’ll gradually kill them off with our invisible, stealthy, and lethally toxic gestures of “kindness”…
Speaking of tobbaco habits, my Grandma’s (she’s 88) doctor told her, if she stopped smoking, she would probably die.
Great interview, a little snippet…
“walk into a room and it smells like someone was smoking, your nose is telling you there’s DANGER in that room”
…or words to that effect.
What a crock. The smoking Nazi’s will not stop until they have everyone quitting except those poor homeless people or those on welfare who will be allowed, because its only fair.
We should politely ask our media representatiuves to please be a little more critical of BS being spewed in their general direction.
in less than two years, smoke residue peeled the finish from the fretboard of my strat. not that i could play it for shit anyway….
KEvron
My Dad, who’d smoked since he was 14, at the age of 71 was suffering from all sorts of ailments — some perhaps smoking related, others most probably not — was told by his doctor that if he didn’t stop smoking he would cease receiving any kind of treatment. So, quite amazingly, he quit (leaving me an insane amount of duty-free loose tobacco that he’d stockpiled from his many border crossings — he lived for much of the time in Washington State, but also had a residence in Burnaby). The next year, he was dead. Go figure.
in less than two years, smoke residue peeled the finish from the fretboard of my strat. not that i could play it for shit anyway….
Did you ever clean it?
My condo overlooks the Don Valley Parkway and my place is constantly dusted with this black soot. I was recently informed that this is aerosolised rubber and asphalt from the highway.
Much healthier than 3rd-hand smoke, I’m sure.
I was recently informed that this is aerosolised rubber and asphalt from the highway.
Well where did you think the “stuff” from tires wearing down goes?
I had never really thought about it.
This story reminds me of “Global Warming”. First we can stop it by changing our light bulbs, and then it morphs into “Climate Change” and is worse than hemorrhoids. People will panic. More pop culture bullshit.
Chemical pollution, on the other hand, is causing smaller penises and feminized genitals in male infants. Sperm counts have decreased from 150 to 60 million per milliliter over the past 50 years. This is not important. Nothing to see here…..:)
“Did you ever clean it?”
even less frequently than i played it.
KEvron
Chemical pollution, on the other hand, is causing smaller penises and feminized genitals in male infants.
Are you trying to justify your small genitalia?…
You also forgot that eating chicken will help males grow breasts…
Global Warming is not “pop culture” bullshit -
“Are you trying to justify your small genitalia?…”
I was born looong before this happened.
CWTF:
“Global Warming is not “pop culture” bullshit -”
Is.
The Ice is Melting…….AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
For “tenuous hyperbole” it sure is getting a lot of you worked up.
Any idea why ?. Or does that happen with all tenuous hyperbole ?
RT, to be honest, I think that is my Grandma’s version of what her doctor told her (being mostly deaf and all). Though, she being so old and frail, I’m sure Doc would advise her not to quit her mystery novels either. It is amazing that your father quit after all those years, my Grandma started smoking when she was a teen as well. I hope I’m smoking my cigarellos into my late eighties.
Re “in less than two years, smoke residue peeled the finish from the fretboard of my strat. not that i could play it for shit anyway….”
Ya live, then ya die. With any luck we’ll all be able to rip Purple Haze in Valhalla with a dart dangling out of corner of mouth…a la Keith.
A neighbour of ours died when she was 93. She was the wife of a prominent wealthy doctor here and she and her friends would get together to play cards once a week. These ladies kept different brands of cigs in their houses so that they would have the right brand for their guests. Oddly enough, they all lived to a ripe old age. Sally quite when she was 89 – she thought it was perhaps time to give them up. Her death was really old age – no breathing problems, etc.
I know this is unusual – but considering all her kids are old now, and her friends (with the exception of one) lived to ripe old ages, one has to wonder. There would be plenty of this third hand stuff in all their homes.
Sperm counts are down, as is quality, (a bigger issue, cause bad sperm causes birth defects) and no one knows why. It’s happening too fast for genetics or evolution, so it likely is chemicals and poor nutrition, and yes, possibly things like tobacco smoke, which used to be boring old pure tobacco in pipes or handrolled in cigars and cigarettes. (Still bad and had nicotine, but not the same as today’s stuff.)
See in the 40′s and 50′s, loads of chemicals were added to enhance flavour and preserve the tobacco as it was shipped overseas to troops, then put on store shelves. Surprise, sperm quality went down, infertility went up, miscarriage and stillbirth rates went up.
And they have been rising ever since in every country that tracks stats correctly. Not in Canada however. We stopped properly tracking most indicators of reproductive health 20 or 30 years ago. The numbers looked bad, so we stopped counting, and we don’t even bother now, even after WHO has publicly condemned us for it.
Even after places like Sarnia and other chemically laden areas starting seeing all the male babies die. Their ratio of female to male births is like 3 to 1.
But as I said, no politicians give a shit.
Hmmm. I don’t buy this causality.
Not that personal experience counts for much in the scheme of things, but my father smoked (as did my mother… at least until WWII), so did my wife’s father and both my wife and I were/are smokers and we had four kids. So, do we have some kind of “immunity” to smoke-induced infertility?
According to the Vatican, the higher rates of infertility are due to contraception medications.
Now that there’s funnay! I don’t care who ya are.
I don’t have the link handy (go Google it, as Bush 41 would say) but it’s TRUE! They claim that flushed contraceptives are the cause of increased rates of infertility/sterility.
Mmm, well RT I hope that you don’t get the rest of your health information from the Vatican, because they aren’t Doctors. And there has never ever been any scientific proof to show that birth control causes infertility. (It reduces birth rates, to be sure. but that is different than infertility rates or pregnancy loss rates.)
You were likely some of the lucky people, or as another possibility, remember that in nature, “late” periods don’t exist. Reality is that if a woman is late, then gets a period, she is likely having an extremely early miscarriage due to a damaged fetus. It’s only in the last 20 years or so, with very good blood tests and ultrasounds that most women even knew they were pregnant prior to being two months along.
Scientists are very very concerned about reproductive health and chemicals. And even people who like smoking, have to admit, there are a lot of chemicals in cigarettes beyond tobacco.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/aboriginals/health.html
for the Sarnia story.
Trust me, I’m not getting my “health information” (or anything else, for that matter) from the Vatican. I just threw that in for amusement. Nor am I dismissing the serious detriments to health from smoking. But I also don’t believe there’s a causal relationship between it and reproductive problems any more so than there may be from other environmental factors.
Well, Toronto and most other places carefully remove those hormones from drinking water, so again, I really doubt it unless they are drinking and bathing in untreated water every single day.
Especially because one of the things that fertility Docs do is carefully monitor hormone levels in patients. And they could rebalance them, in that case like mine did, when I was short on estrogen.
And it still would not explain why sperm dna is being damaged. Estrogen can’t make that happen.
Ok, ok, just saying.
I know, you love to smoke. So we’ll leave it at that for now. I just hope that for your sake long term you are right. I have a feeling you aren’t.
Oh, I’m doomed… I have no doubt about that. In fact, like dear old Kurt Vonnegut, I should probably sue Imperial Tobacco on the grounds of false advertising for not more effectively delivering on its lethal pledges…
I guess it depends on how one views this silly old thing we call “life” — for me, it’s a momentary affair.
Sounds like someone could use a good bloodletting.