Myth: Unimpeachable scientific studies have proven secondhand smoke kills 60,000 Americans a year
Pub Date: 1/1/2003
Fact: The science is contradictory and some is unreliable.
The study most relied upon by smoking prohibitionists was one authored by the Environmental Protection Agency that was so fatally flawed as a piece of reliable science that a federal judge "vacated" the study, in essence ruling it null and void.
Another study usually cited by prohibitionists was authored by the World Health Organization, a branch of the United Nations. Even though the study's authors attempted to bury the report, The London Daily Telegraph fought a legal battle to obtain the report. When it did, it wrote, "The world's leading health organization has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer, but that it could even have a protective effect."
The study's authors lamely later wrote, in defense of their work, "The study found that there was a 16 percent increased risk of lung cancer among non-smoking spouses of smokers. For workplace exposure, the estimated risk was 17 percent. However, due to small sample size, neither increased risk was statistically significant."
Source: Special Reports II, published and distributed to 180,000 households state-wide, winter 2002 by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.