Just one night in smoky bar can be toxic

Source: MSNBC/Reuters

Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke in bars and restaurants can result in measurable levels of a toxin in workers’ bodies that is known to cause lung cancer, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

They found nonsmoking workers in Oregon who worked a single shift in a bar or restaurant that allowed smoking were more likely to have a detectable level of NNK — a carcinogen linked with lung cancer — in their bodies than those who worked in nonsmoking establishments.

“NNK is only found in the body as a result of either smoking or breathing other people’s smoke,” said Michael Stark of the Multnomah County Health Department in Portland, Ore., whose study appears in the American Journal of Public Health.

Stark and colleagues studied 52 nonsmoking bar and restaurant workers who were exposed to smoke at work, and compared them to 32 similar nonsmoking workers from communities in Oregon that prohibited smoking in such places.

For the study, participants, mainly young, uninsured women, gave urine samples before and after working at least four hours.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19502040/

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Yeah, I'm an anti-smoking Nazi, but IMHO it's past time smoking in public places is banned. I'm in a foul mood about this since our stupid legislature is right now wrestling over an anti-smoking bill in which our idiots in the State senate passed one gutted with amendments that Rendell is threatening to veto.

BTW, you can't smoke anywhere anymore - what will we blame lung disorders on now?

and I agree with you. One night outside or day, for that matter, in NY or LA would be lethal!!

I just don't want to have to breathe it. If I worried about every toxin out there that I might possibly be exposed to, I'd never come out of my filtered air bubble. Sunlight is toxic too, too much Oxygen is toxic, water can be toxic, and getting in a smoker's face can also be detrimental to your health. And no, I'm not a smoker-I quit over 30 years ago.

Smokers are no more violent than anyone else, except maybe drunks!

violent than drunks but maybe I'm just lucky that way.

I'm an EX-Smoker -- ended my 27 year smoking career in '84...

I've stood in the door of a train to prevent it closing until a cigarette was extinguished. Given my choice, I'd rather die a quick death from a nasty tobacco addict than a slow one from being forced to breathe some addicted selfish idiot's secondhand smoke.

There are stages to the reaction to anti-smoking laws. You can't back down and public humiliation is a perfectly good tool to retrain the addict in new behaviors. Just don't use it on your friends. Let strangers tell them what murderous corporate tools they are.

My local Democratic club was the typical smoke-filled room. Nobody would show even the simple courtesy of smoking in the hall. So I began by asking every single candidate for club office if he/she was a smoker. I MADE it an issue. At that point, nobody was standing with me. Remember Gandhi? "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Club candidates began calling me at home to insist they didn't and had never smoked. One year later, a candidate for a judgeship looked around the clubroom and gushed how wonderful it was to be in a room that wasn't full of smoke.

Smokers had it their way for decades without a shred of consideration for anyone else. Too damn bad for them.

Well done!

And most of them are naturally occurring.

It takes decades of smoking to induce cancer. The "toxins" one accumulates from one night in a bar are probably outweighed 1000 to 1 by the healthy advantage of simple relaxation.

Open moral superiority and terminal pissiness about the subject.

Frankly, I find the whole thing quite tedious.

when I see ALL these pissy posters traveling exclusively on bicycles I'll pay attention. Until then, they are all hypocrites.

I used to be able to get acupuncture with moxibustion. Now it is no longer legal as I was told that the FDA has now come out and said that everything related to any kind of "smoke" causes cancer including moxibustion.

I guess I'm really screwed. I smoked on and off for about 25 years and also lived in a place w/a wood burning stove for well over 10 years. The only place to go out where I live allows smoking inside.

Oh well ... should I make my final arrangements now or wait a couple of weeks? }(

:kick:

Did anyone at any time on this thread suggest that smoking was good for one's health.

Christ.

I can smoke because car exhaust is worse. Air pollution is worse. Your big mouth is worse.

Oh, I have heard it all. Addicts will say anything to maintain their addiction. They are beyond repetitive, predictable, and dull.

:eyes:

It won't stop until cigarettes go the way of marijuana - illegal in all 50 states.

The only thing I really have a problem with in this bill is the allowing of smoking in a home based day care center. Disallow that but allow it in bars, casinos and any open air venue in designated areas. They banned smoking at The Linc (Lincoln Financial Field) last year and it really made things worse because instead of smoking out on the ramps, in the open air away from others, people were smoking in the bathrooms to avoid the ridiculous security sweeps. You could barely see in there for all the smoke. It's just stupid to not allow smoking outside.

Camp fires too.

Same carcinogens.

Woo hoo! The poisonous privilege of a few will be no more, and the rest of us can breathe again when we eat out or get a drink.

The Louisville Courier-Journal is providing full coverage.

I'm so elated that despite being in a "tobacco state", we're going smoke-free. This has been a long hard struggle for the ban's proponents, and Sunday will be a great day for the city.

And I want YOUR car banned because it's killing people. :eyes:

Further, last time I checked, cars ran outdoors, and their pollutants are normally diffused widely. Can't say the same about indoor cigarette smoke.

the rights of the many trampling over the rights of the few... we might as well ban unpopular speech as well since that kills a fair number of people. Oh, and since christians are the larger majority, let's just ban all of those other heathen religions.

n/t

And bleating about their right to do it.

Get a grip.

at people screaming "rights!" over a poisonous privilege that was never a right.

What a load of hooey!!!

Self righteous. YOU ARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

During Prohibition? You'd have been shot!!!

The world is NOT going to kiss your ass, inspite of all your screaming!

Live and let live!


You don't like what's happening?? Bite the Bullet!


But I seriously DOUBT you were ever in ANY club!!!!!

Hysteria like that will kill you faster then any second hand smoke will.

You have made me a fan for life. :yourock:

I mean, look at the party's name, for freakin' sake.

Or maybe I should, LOL. :-)

I had to spend a couple of days in Milwaukee recently and couldn't wait to get the F*ck out.

It was the smokers in the restaurants that were the worst! I was finishing up my breakfast one morning and one of those ignorant, uncaring assholes lit up right next to me. Gak!!!

If they were able to quit for a bit and find out how ugly that crap really is...

--------

On edit: aren't the smoker's rants on this thread a hoot? God!!! Right up there with the hard-core gun nuts. What is it about guns and carcinogens that makes supposedly good people into psychotics?

I'm an ex-smoker so I feel their pain.

When I was in the grips of the smoking pathology I probably would have displayed their obnoxious attitude too.

It's SO nice to be FREE!!!!!!! I feel sorry for those slaves...

and addiction makes people do some irrational things, like expressing a total nonchalance for others' health and well-being before processing these thoughts through a normal sense of ethics.

of people to associate with others like them and a business being allowed to offer a choice (smoking or non-smoking).

There are enough bars in most towns for people to have choices (or start their own). The idea of limiting choice, over a legal product, is what irks most folks I think.

Workers could choose not to work at places that allow smoking, patrons could choose, business could choose - their bodies, their choice, and if someone who is a non-smoker chooses to go to a place that allows smoking that is their choice as well.

In places where people HAVE to go, I am fine with banning it (courts, etc) but no one forces anyone to go to the bar.

In Boulder, CO before there was a smoking ban, hardly any restaurant or bar was "non-smoking". Even in "non-smoking" sections, one was never free to choose to breath cigarette smoke or not because the smoke never considered the boundaries.

But it was awesome after the ban. I could go out to eat anywhere and not come home with a stuffy nose, smelling like an ashtray. And bars became really nice as well - not having to endure the harsh smell just to hear a good band. And coming home with my girlfriend...her hair still smelled great after going out to dance. No more essence of ashtray.

As for business, plenty of bars and restaurants doing quite well years later.

And as for having choice go to anywhere, maybe if we're always alone. But sometimes with a group of friends, you just go. In the days prior to the ban, smoking in bars and restaurants was the rule and rarely did anyone have a choice, except to stay home or stay outdoors.

Point is, smoking indoors doesn't give anyone inside a choice whether or not to breath the smoke. And these smoking bans are one example where the greater good has been served. Because breathing smoke-free air never hurt a smoker anymore than it did a non-smoker - equanimity for all. Can't say the opposite is true.

Well said, gtar.

it was the ones spreading their poison who had all of the "choice".

Now it's the poisoners who have to take their habit outside (big f*ckin' deal) and the rest of us can enjoy a better quality of life.

In S.F. before the ban the bars' and restaurants' (lobbying association) were making all kinds of whining noises about how their business would suffer if smoking were banned.

Post ban damage to their business due to the ban -- Zippo, Nada, None. No change.

Improvement of the quality of life for folks frequenting those places --- Priceless.

Restauranteurs screamed that they would lose their customers. The original no smoking sections were tiny and cramped in inconvenient spots. But people kept asking for no smoking seating. So the section got larger and larger until the smoking area was teeny tiny around the bar.

Smokers reek. Who would want to eat near one?

was a single table in the middle of the room. What a laugh!! People could smoke anywhere they wanted...except at that one table.

She had cancer. She was a smoker and died at the age of 84. I am sure if she did not smoke, she may have lived to be 85. She certainly was not deprived of life and lived a vivid and engaged life up until the time of her death. She also was an intelligent woman who was well respected in the community . She was also exposed to secondary smoke from her childhood. She was not filthy or stupid or engaged in sinful habits. Her husband, who was afflicted with Alzheimers, died just a few months ago. He was in his late eighties. Don't know if he smoked, but certainly he was exposed to secondary smoke. Did she cause him to get Alzhiemers? Is that the next accusation to heap upon smokers, I wonder.

To each his own.

Another neighbor, who never smoked, died at the age of seventy five--too fat all of her life maybe?

two dead relatives - neither of them smoked and both died of cancer; one of the lung btw. :wtf:

:kick:

She never got to know if a coworker died because of her, or a cousin at a wedding got a vicious asthma attack because of her. After all, it never affected HER, so that means it was just fine.

Your argument is specious. Wow. A smoker did NOT die of lung cancer. One. Two. That sure invalidates the thousands who did, doesn't it?

Why is it news that going to a bar exposes people to toxins? Isn't that the whole point--to become intoxicated?

A bar is a support group for alcoholics.

I never go into them -- too depressing since I quit drinking...

...should stop making sense. eom

and it turns out it was BAD for them! The HORROR!

it could make the activity unhealthy

It's got all of the charm of uncontrollable farting.

Wet farting.

Yep. I'm from Philly. Looks like I have to give up live music again.

--p!

Luckily, the best gigs are NOT in bars...

Bar gigs always were pretty shitty anyway. No great loss.

They don't even pay for shit anymore....

....I play in a local rock band and business has sucked since the smoking ban here in Ohio started getting enforced. Before it went into effect, everybody was telling me how much business would improve since they - as non smokers - would start going to places like that.

But bullshit. Instead, they still stay home and the clubs are getting killed here. We play a regular Wed night gig and they have cut our pay because of the loss of business. Businesses are fighting for survival since their regular customers are stayinh home and/or going to places with patios.

I don't even smoke, but the hysteria surrounding second-hand smoke is astounding. It won't be long before they'll ask for smokers to be imprisoned.

ban in CT has improved business for restaurants. Why in the world wouldn't people want to go to a club that doesn't allow those noxious fumes? The trick is that they all need to be on the same playing field. Are people really giving up something they love like live music because they need to smoke in order to enjoy it?

Mind-boggling to me.

which is why even in places that allow smoking you find non-smoking restaurants. it is bad for bars. especially in the winter.

in case you are wondering, I worked at a bar in DC last winter. December (when there was smoking allowed) was up 4% from December 2005. January 1 the ban went into effect. business was down 23% from January 05. it is better in the summer. and yes, I am a smoker, and I am fine going outside. of course, now the neighbors complain about people outside.

I like to smoke when I drink and listen to extremely live loud music. It's unhealthy all the way around, but I ENJOY IT! I'm not forcing anyone else to do it. I'm also a musician, and as someone else mentioned bar gigs really don't pay anything, but then on top of that you're not allowed to smoke on stage if you want? Screw that. I've quit playing bars/clubs as well.

We used to eat out two or three times a week..once the ban went into effect, we ate at places with outdoor patios and only once in a while..

people are creatures of habit..but when we are paying to go out, we can choose to not go if things change and we don't like the changes..

Lots of the places we went to for years are no longer even open, so I guess it's a moot point these days :)

The people I know who used to visit the clubs, are just hanging out at each other's homes these days..and not having to tip the waitresses :)

The major killers of live music in those years are drunk driving law enforcement and the video tape (disk) recorder and cable TV.

I would also note that the average American has much less disposable income than back in the 60s and 70s and dropping $100 for a night at the club for 2 is a big deal...

Don't need to imprison smokers just make sure their dirty pollution doesn't hit MY nose. I'll defend to the death their right to diminish their lives with that junk but that doesn't give them the right to pollute my world too.

Take heart though, when the ban took effect in San Francisco there was a temporary lull in some of the business but once the smokers figured out that they just have to take their habit outside -- no big deal


On Edit: Note: I have NO problem with enforcing drunk driving laws! But it WAS THE MAJOR killer of live music that occurred in the 80s and early 90s...

Humans evolved around fires of all sorts.

hmmm

"Cigarette smoking is the single most preventable cause of premature death in the United States. Each year, more than 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking. In fact, one in every five deaths in the United States is smoking related. Every year, smoking kills more than 276,000 men and 142,000 women."

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/Factsheets/cig_smoking_mort.htm

anymore. People with any kind of addiction are now unacceptable (except for incessant cell phone usage and general rudeness). Does that strike anyone as being odd? Bars exist for a reason, or they used to. It was a place for people to indulge in vice and to be uninhibited, and to escape their homes. Smoke free everything else is fine by me (especially eateries), but the damned need a place to go too.

Bars are support groups for alcoholics...

I used to work retail. Got robbed several times. I stopped working there, even though I was a single mom who desperately needed a job, and there just wasn't anything around to replace it that wasn't retail. Nobody is being forced to work in a bar.

I weighed the risk to my health and decided it wasn't worth it, same as ANYONE else can.

or worked construction, or moved to a better community, or been bar owners instead of bar employees, or been bus drivers, or sanitation workers, or worked at the mall.

Steelworkers, electricians, and fisherman have the highest rate of death per capita, as per OSHA.

If we were really concerned about people's health, we would ban steel, electricity, and fish?

Of course not. And why not? Because steelworkers, electricians, and fishermen knew what they were getting into before they took the jobs. It's the 21st century. If you haven't figured out yet that tobacco is bad for you, secondhand or otherwise, then maybe they shouldn't have let you out of the "group home" so early.

Cigarettes will KILL you, whether you smoke them or not. We've known that for half a century or more. At this point, you've got no one to blame but yourself.

Still, it's up to the individual whether to smoke; but I have the right not to have them smoke in my face.

As regards smoking bans in bars/ pubs, I'm a bit divided. On the one hand, they make life easier for those of us who become ill or uncomfortable in the presence of cigarette smoke, and otherwise couldn't go to pubs. On the other hand, some people, like it or not, are seriously addicted to cigarettes, and not having *any* leisure place to smoke may (a) create a serious hardship for them; I(b) make them more likely to smoke at home around their kids; (c) lead to more public disturbances and street violence on a Saturday night, as the seriously-drunk have to go outside into the street every time they want to smoke.

I watched my father's last six months of life before he died of prostate cancer at 76. Not remotely pleasant. I saw a friend who was healthy as a horse get diagnosed with stomach cancer. He was in his early fifties. Three months later he was dead. I have had friends killed in auto accidents in their twenties. You can live your life as carefully as possible, and maybe you will live a long life and maybe you won't. You can't control it, you can only give yourself the delusion that you can. Everybody dies.

I am sorry about your father and your friends. I knew someone with a very healthy lifestyle who died of cancer at 38. I'm not saying that if you don't smoke you won't die young or get a horrible illness, just that you're less likely to do so.

And it's not just cancer that's a risk for smokers- I have known people who died fairly young and unpleasantly from emphysema, even though they did not get lung cancer.

I'm not even saying that everyone should give up smoking. For some people, giving up smoking would affect their mental health so badly as not to be worth it. Anyway, smoking (when it's not in other people's faces) is their right (I'm also against the drug laws, though I choose not to take recreational drugs myself). I'm just saying that just because smoking is only one factor in health, and non-smoking does not guarantee long life, does not mean that smoking has no influence at all. Just as we all know people who've been injured by cars despite looking before they crossed the road, but one still has a lower risk of injury if one does look before crossing the road.

Many of the labor laws that exist could be looked at through the same prism. "You don't HAVE to work in that firetrap of a manufacturing plant"!

Labor laws are there so that workers don't have to make that choice (between their health and their paycheck).

so-called liquidfied, in NM we don't have the wter and it doesn't work) have deposited so much mercury on the NM landscape that if you catch a fish in the lakes or streams, you should only eat 2 a year. If you are pregnant or a child: don't eat any! By the way! have you been near a park lately where they have just sprayed herbicides and insecticides, and have you smelled your car when it starts up? etc.!

I live in the shadow of: 1) a steel plant, 2) an oil refinery, and 3) a power-generation facility (nice phrase for what amounts to an endless coal train).

So I'm supposed to get gigged up about someone lighting a cigarette near me? I wish I could be so completely self-righteous about carcinogens. Unfortunately, I can't, because I live in a city that essentially tells the big corps spewing crap into the atmosphere to basically "bring it on."

I could even get funnier on the subject and tell all the anti-smoking folks that in the neighborhood I live in, you'd think cigarette smoke was a nice, wholesome break from the other fumes you're subjected to 24/7. But I'll let them vent their rage for ruining suburbia with exhaust, cigarette smoke, whatever. If one of them had to live in a city for a day, they'd all perish. Their lungs would shrivel up and die, I guess, or at least that's what I'm hearing on threads like this...

Just like those folks who work in bars have a choice to quit their jobs...

No one really has to stay and tolerate that kind of horrific abuse! (LOL)

But you know what? I like the neighborhood. I like my neighbors. Go figure. Just like maybe service staff, bartenders, bus boys and cooks like where they are in the establishments they serve. That should count for something, shouldn't it?

Strange days.

on edit: lost a transitive.

Since alcohol is healthful and harmless.

n/t

:rofl:

All about a woman who worked in bars all her life and got lung cancer.

She never smoked a cigarette in her life.

She died this year.

and she didn't smoke or hang out in smokey bars. I'm not saying there isn't a connection in some cases, but I do believe that some people are more susceptible to lung cancer than others.

until the time I was fourteen, by two parents who each smoked a pack a day all those years...

...am I forgiven for being a smoker myself?

It really, really does seem like I didn't have a choice in the matter at all...

It only makes sense that you would be influenced greatly by your parents' smoking habit. That doesn't make you bad or wrong for being like your parents, in any way. All it means is that, people need the choice/opportunity to be smoke-free, in my opinion. It's never too late to stop smoking, and it's also never too soon to realize that smoking is unhealthy.

but you can quit.

The only requirement is the desire to quit and then get support in realizing that desire.

It's VERY hard but it IS that easy... Good luck. :hi:

We used to have an awesome smoke free lounge/club here where I live and I really enjoyed going there. The place was smoke free because in part of the place there was a sushi bar. The owners didn't allow smoking b/c they felt the smoke would contaminate the flavor of the sushi. The lounge was nice & they had DJ's every night spinning house and drum & bass. They made some of the meanest sake martinis there too.

Sadly, the place closed down after about 18 months in business, and I think it partially had to do with them losing the business of the smoking crowd.

where we already have anti-smoking laws, and I used to live in San Francisco, before, during, and after CA enacted their anti-smoking laws.

But I am thinking about (nonsmokers) people like me, choking in a thick cloud, in a downtown Portland nite-club. I actually had to step outside, it was so bad. Pretty much every smoker had a cigarette lit, burning, and waiting. For every one cigarette put to a mouth, there were at least 20 or more cigarettes burning, just burning. Nobody smoking them. Just cigarettes burning. Any non-smoker could get a huge nicotine rush.

Then of course I come home smelling like an ashtray.

as much as I hate people who rant about smoking.

Epidemiologists, please calculate the odds of getting lung or heart disease from occasionally being in a smoky room considering it takes at least 20 years to get stricken when intentionally sucking down the smoke of 20-60 cigarettes a day.

So, I'm living in NYC a few years ago, cleaning some nasty black soot from my windowsill preparing for a party later that night. Partygoers show up and one pronounces from the doorway-- "There's somebody smoking in here!"

"Yeah, I know."

"Who is it? Why was I not told there would be smoking?"

"None of your business. By the way, who the fuck are you?"

"You can't smoke in here."

"Excuse me?"

I summarily invited this particular asshole to eat some of my black soot from the clean air outside before going back to said clean air and sucking up bus fumes.

Tobacco smoke-- natural and organic, unlike all that other shit we pump into the air.

btw -- I agee with you, OP.

I played 10,000 nights in smoky dives

but once discovering how much easier it is to breathe and sing in a non-smoking environment -- I'll NEVER go back...

on smoking in bars & restaurants ... That's what a Democratic state legislature gets you -- real results that help real people. Formerly, the 'pukes were in the majority in the statehouse chamber.

and I've actually started to go to restaurants again. It is such an intense pleasure to be able to enjoy the flavor of my food without the overtone of stinking tobacco smoke and it's an even better pleasure to be breathing comfortably during the whole meal. One of these days I might even go to one of the local clubs when someone I want to see is playing there. I have that freedom now. I didn't have the ability to do that until now.

Smokers always think that because they tolerate inhaling concentrated smoke into their lungs, that everybody else's lungs can tolerate dilute smoke. That is simply not the case.

Business is still booming in bars and restaurants. Smokers don't seem to be too inconvenienced by ducking outside for a couple of minutes to smoke, any more than they're inconvenienced by bathroom calls. People are not staying away.

People like me are finally able to GO.

And I am sure that if you have asthma, it can be quite dangerous. I don't go to bars anymore to hear music (unless it is an outdoor venue) because I hate coming home smelling of smoke.

in bars, clubs and in all public places........and I am a smoker...

I like the law..didn't at first but I think it's a good law.

Smoking should be completely and totally banned in public.

If you want to kill yourself, foul your air, etc - do so in your home or car. For the rest of us, keep the air as clean as possible. It is the height of rudeness and stupidity to think that anyone has the right to Foul the air that I breathe.

My non-smoking friend and I plan to visit a bar tomorrow to show our support for the ban. We plan to eat an unhealthy meal,
but it will be our choice to do so in our choice of a now clean air pub. Choices, people.

Happens to the best of us. :)

and I'm happy, since I don't want to have to breathe that disgusting shit, regardless of health factors.