Quote:
Originally Posted by n0nsensical
So I guess we should ban cars too because car exhaust contains hundreds of carcinogens that can cause illness and death? What, you GET cars? Cars don't cause any problems for you? Oh, right, they're good for YOU, and the economy, you're not going to complain. Something is used for leisure, you don't get it, you don't like it? Let's ban it. When did it become your right to tell everyone else what's good for THEM? If you don't like the effects of tobacco smoke you are free to not inhale it. Used to be a different story in public, sure, but the current set of laws takes care of that quite well. This is turning from a public health issue to another morality crusade.
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There is a difference between things that contain carcinogens and things that can be shown to reasonably correlate with increased instances of adverse medical conditions. There have been numerous studies directly linking smoky restaurants and community rates of various cigarette associated medical conditions. Do you know of any studies that directly correlate the inhalation of traffic exhaust and increased instances of adverse medical conditions? I think I know of one, and it has to do with people who live near freeways.
In any case, the mere existence of carcinogens isn't necessarily what is important from a public health stand point. As far as I can tell, prior to smoking bans, the adverse effects of passive tobacco smoke exposure were much greater than the effects of passive car exhaust exposure
at the exposure levels most people were experiencing at the time.