It might be because they teach them nothing at medical school. From The Daily Mail:
Smoking in your car is more damaging to health than breathing in exhaust fumes, a leading doctor has claimed. Douglas Noble, a British Medical Association public health expert, made the claim as his colleagues called for tougher tobacco and alcohol controls...
London-based Dr Noble said: "In cars, particle concentrations are 27 times higher than in a smoker's home and 20 times higher than in a pub, in the days when you could smoke in public places. (1) It would be safer to have your exhaust pipe on the inside of your car than smoke cigarettes (2) in terms of fine particular matter released. A ban would protect pregnant women and children."
1) AFAIAA, there is no general ban on 'smoking in public places', just in enclosed public spaces, although the Buckinghamshire Bansturbulary is working on that one as well.
2) Ahem.
Meh
1 hour ago
9 comments:
Guys like Dr Noble are a gift to journalists. It isn't too difficult to guess what his colleagues think of him either.
Unless he's used them all up doing these experiments.
AKH, FD, your comments raise and interesting train of thought.
Me and Frank get in one car and light up, and you re-route the exhaust pipe of the car next to it into the passenger bit and seal the windows, and then we invite Dr N to get into one of the two cars.
Intriguingly, as an asthmatic person and 'petrol head', ciggy smoke has always upset me (but not so much cigars or pipes) and concentrated exhaust fumes also, the latter most. But I positively love the fragrance of five star...mmmmm.
From the article: "Father-of-two Mr Bartlett believes that the smoking ban would ‘make the environment cleaner’ and prevent ‘harm’ to children.
He said: ‘Why should people have the freedom to smoke in my face, pass on diseases and spoil the environment?"
I can see it now, a ban on breathing in public places to prevent people being able to "pass on diseases".
Elsewhere on the page "NO IFS NO BUTTS, THE BAN CAUSED THAT SHUT PUBS" (I think that means "the ban that caused pubs to shut").
What was the editor thinking of, printing such heresy? Everyone knows that pubs are only shutting because of "the recession and cheaper alcohol in supermarkets".
Was in the back of a Merc on the M4 being driven into London,(exhaust pipe town),by a girlfriend who was 4 months pregnant. I lit up and she complained about me harming the baby. I clocked the speedo- over a ton!
BTW - twas not mine TF
;-)
PS
Baby now 6, all good!
Sok
Mark Wadsworth,
it's worth bringing your experiment up whenever SHS is mentioned, and making the same offers to anti-smokers and especially MPs to prove how rubbish their 'evidence' is.
L, for my part, I don't like the smell of filter cigarettes, but rollies smell lovely.
B, no, pubs are shutting because people are waking up to the immense harm that alcohol causes, aren't they?
Anon, are you still together with the speed freak?
DerekP, a bit like when David Campbell Bannerman offered to stab Caroline Lucas in the face?
I was heard a talk on "lifstyle" for people with heart problems. The speaker mentioned the evil that is smoking, and then turned to stress. After a few minutes she asked us how to combat stress. I said that when I was young I found that puffing my pipe reduced stress immediately.
Still, it's my experience that cigarette smoking increases stress substantially: I get a stressy urge to throw the twattish smokers out of the room as they make my eyes sting and my clothes stink.
While I'm always happy to denounce a smoking ban, Noble's point here is entirely correct for any car sold new in the UK after 1992. See here.
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