A new study claims that that secondhand smoke is responsible for 40 percent to 60 percent of asthma cases among children 2 months to 2 years of age who are exposed to ETS.
An amazing conclusion given that:
- No one really knows what causes asthma. It must be difficult to rule out confounding risk factors when you don't know what they are. Some have theorized that asthma is a disease of western civilization. In first world countries, children's immune systems are not "challenged" as much as in the third world.
- Severity of asthma was not associated with secondhand smoke.
- Data on asthma was self-reported--individuals were asked to classify their own respiratory problems. Such data tend to be unreliable.
- While asthma rates have significantly increased over the last 10 to 15 years, smoking has decreased.
- Other studies on asthma and secondhand smoke give conflicting results--a phenomenon which may be interpreted as evidence that associations between secondhand smoke and asthma occur at random, not causally.
- In 1997, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that half of inner city children have high levels of cockroach allergen in their bedrooms and about one third of these children are allergic to cockroach allergen. No data was presented in the Pediatrics study to rule out this type of situation as being responsible for the reported asthma.
Adults shouldn't smoke around children. But you don't need junk science to make the point.
Copyright © 1998 Steven J. Milloy. All rights reserved. Site developed and hosted by WestLake Solutions, Inc.