The In-Car Smoking Debate

It makes perfect sense. You can't do anything you want with children just because they are on your property. You're not allowed to give your young children alcohol or stick them in a room full of poisonous gas - this law would be just the extension of these reasonable principles.

It is about time. You would have thought that adults would have common sense not to smoke while children are in the car, but I still see it. The government has no choice but to push this through. Anyone who opposes this is obviously a moronic selfish prick.

Kids cannot protect themselves and must rely on responsible adults to do the right thing for them. To smoke in such a confined space as a car with kids inside is very irresponsible. I doubt that very many tickets would get handed out, but people need to know that smoking in a vehicle while children are present is a very unhealthy and unacceptable practice. I stronly agree with any government that wants to ban it!

I wonder how they propose to enforce this rule. It's a pretty invisible crime. They would have to actually catch somebody for the law to have any credibility.

Is Ontario leading the way or have other areas in the world started to do this?

Also, to Stella, I think they would slap a pretty heavy fine on whoever is caught, instilling fear and cleaner lungs in Ontarians. Perhaps I am an optimist.

Wow, was this poorly written. I'd formulate a more meaningful response if I could force myself to read it again.

I love it when people find the time to be insult-tossing trolls but have no time to contribute anything meaningful.

Very well - prise to all thinking Canadians!

to Stella - I suppose it's also forbidden i Ontario to drive and talk on the cell phone (in hand) - so the situation is pretty similar

So, when they extend this to your home..what then?

Not much of a debate, is it?..

I don't see any problems expanding it to a home. If parents are too dumb/assholish to protect kids from second-hand smoke, then the government should.

Crash helmets should be mandatory until age 18.

I think that law is a great idea, kids shouldn't be forced to inhale second hand smoke. I have a feeling some people resent the law because theyre afraid that future laws will ban smoking all together in cars. You already can't smoke on Sherway property outside (even if youre nine meters from a public entrance), and I think this is why it troubles some people.

Smoking in any sort of confined area with a child present should be outlawed. The difference between a car and a house is the ability to enforce such restrictions.

My student newspaper covered this last week. The article I linked doesn't make a persuasive counter-argument, but I believe the comments on it do. Would you mind terribly if I re-posted an excerpt the best one for the sake a creating a discussion? I'm frankly shocked no one took the bait here.

"...If we extended the argument of the supporters of this proposed legislation, then we would also have to support laws that regulate a wide range of parental activity that takes place in the private home which places children at increased risk of adverse health effects.

We would have to ban parents from smoking in the home. We would have to ban parents from drinking more than a drink or two at a time in the home. We would have to ban parents from using insecticides and pesticides. We would have to ban parents from allowing their children out in the sun without sunscreen. We would have to ban parents from allowing their children to ride giant roller coasters. We would have to ban parents from serving their children foods that contain trans-fats. We would have to ban parents from serving their children peanuts before age 3. We would have to ban parents from allowing their children to drink soda that contains sodium benzoate and citric acid..."

I think he makes a great point. My own thoughts on the matter waver between "oh noes they're restricting our civil liberties!" and "somebody think of the children!"

Most of those things you listed aren't necessarily harmful and some of them exist for very good reasons. Every single person that I know that smokes or quit had started because it was the cool thing to do at the time. Everyone else was doing it, so they did it to be social.

That's a really fucking stupid reason to endanger the lives of your children.

> We would have to ban parents from smoking in the home.

Check. As well we should. Any parents who don't have enough brains to refrain from smoking inside a home inhabited by children need a law like that. Difficult to enforce, though...

> We would have to ban parents from drinking more than a
> drink or two at a time in the home.

Huh?? Where does that come from? Most people can control how much they drink and know when it becomes a bad thing. Parents who can't control it, and drink so much that it affects their children's well-being can already be stripped of their parental rights under current laws.

> We would have to ban parents from using insecticides and
> pesticides.

A pesticide ban is something Toronto is planning to implement eventually, and I support it. As for insecticides - if they are used properly, the benefits (i.e. getting rid of disease-carrying pests) outweight the dangers to health. Note that if you just started spraying insecticides madly inside your car, while a child was in it, you already could be prosecuted under current laws for endangering the health of your kids.

> We would have to ban parents from allowing their children
> out in the sun without sunscreen.

Sunscreen is a good thing, but again, the benefits of active lifestyle (i.e. playing in the sun) outweight the dangers of sun exposure. Whereas smoking when children are present does them absolutely no good, and a lot of harm.

> We would have to ban parents from allowing their children
> to ride giant roller coasters.

Another HuH??? Roller coasters are actually plenty safe. Much safer than cars in the hands of private citizens (which I wouldn't mind outlawing, given how stupid and irresponsible many drivers are - they just don't realize they are dealing with extremely dangerous equipment).

Anyway, I hope you get an idea. I hate nanny states, and I hate when I am not allowed to do something that hurts no one but me. However, when it hurts others (who, in case of children, can't even stand up for themselves) - it's a whole different matter.

This law won't be all that hard to enforce. If you get pulled over for a traffic violation, the smell of smoke in your car will make it obvious that you were smoking with your kids and you will get caught. (It is much harder to catch people violating laws banning talking on cell phones while driving.) However, if you don't speed and smoke at the same time, you will get away with it.

umm, people who smoke regularly in their car tend to perma stink their cars. It would always stink of cigs if they got pulled over whether or not they were recently smoking with a child in the car. I'm pretty sure an officer would have to catch you in the act, ie physically see you smoking with a child present in the car. This is mind I wouldn't expect very many fines to be issued. I think this is more of a statement hoping to deter people who actually are dumb enough to blast cigs with kids in the car from doing it. Smoking fucking sucks, they should just stop selling them altogether.

I honestly don't think it would be too hard to enforce as if you are seen smoking in a car by an officer then thats you done.

Forcing a child to inhale your second hand smoke should be seen as a form of child abuse. Not only will it cause major health problems but it can lead to kids taking up smoking and hence escalating the problem. Just because some parents are too lazy or dumb to protect their kids doesn't mean its a good thing, government legislation is the only way to protect the vulnerable.

....welll, just to be a tad contrarian ... and not to say I am ENDORSING smoking in cars with kids ... but I do get a bit edgy when 'holier then thou' types stick their principles up my nose but quite DELIBERATELY continue to foul the breathing environment tenfold ever time they step into their cars and turn the ignition, or get on board any kind of aircraft and blast off ... Something about 'those in glass houses', no?

Well all i can say to that is we do not connect the exhaust to an enclosed space and then stick children in !!!

I agree that pollution is obviously a major factor in the air quality but this bill would definitely provide some protection for those who can't 'just say no'

The Junk Science claims state the respiratory toxins levels inside the Car being 23 times higher than inside a house. Well of Course the toxins inside a Car are 23 times higher than inside a house butt Second Hand Tobacco Smoke is Not the culprit. The average smoker exhales less than 500 mg per day of SHS, say 21-75mg during a 95 minute Car trip. The average Car exhales at least 2.2 MILLION mg Per Day of SHS and a huge amount of that finds it's way INSIDE the Car. The 23 times higher level toxins are being created by the CAR which is well documented and was published for the public in the book "Indoor Air Quality" Based on the study referenced below of a sealed room full of smokers, 1,170 to 1,000,000 and guestimating the cubic area of the average car to be about 10 % of that. It would require 117 to 100,000 smokers smoking in the car for 1 hour with all the windows tightly sealed to reach the EPA established potential Risk Levels of Respiratory Toxins. I would PAY to see somebody stuff that many smokers in one car - with KIDS ! It is KIDS who need banning from Cars
Not tobacco smokers or better yet, ban Cars altogether because it is the millions of Cars that are poisoning the drivers, passengers, and people on city streets. Butt since banning cars will never happen products such as the Nanotech Car Air Filters are a viable alternative to banning smoking in Cars with kids present

Littlewood & Fennell
Independent public and health policy research group
Austin, Texas
1999

NUMBER OF CIGARETTES NEEDED TO
REACH DANGEROUS LEVELS OF POLLUTION
IN AN ENCLOSED ENVIRONMENT
Estimated number of cigarettes required to reach TLV levels from side stream
smoke emission of selected chemicals in a sealed and unventilated 100 m3
enclosure (Gori and Mantel, 1991)
(Please note: 100 m3 are equivalent to a room 22' x 21' x 8' ceiling, or 3,696 cubic feet)

Methyl chloride 1,170
Hydroquinone 1,250
Cadmium 1,430
Acetaldehyde 1,430
Acetic Acid 1,660
Nitrogen oxides 1,780
Phormic Acid 1,790
Pyridine 4,100
Phenol 7,600
Methylamine 13,000
Benzene 13,300
Catecol 16,500
Nickel 40,000
Diethylamide 50,000
Hydrazine 145,000
Acetone 178,000
Benzo(a)pyrene 222,000
2-Toluidine 300,000
Polonium 750,000
Toluene 1,000,000

TLV = Threshold Limit Value. It is the threshold used in the USA,
a country with most restrictive standards for toxic exposure.
[*] Side Stream Smoke is the smoke from the cigarette released right downstream of the hot tip.
That type of smoke is the worst, since the chemical catalysis processes that occur a
few instants after the smoke leaves the burning tip still have to blend with the surrounding air
(in short, before becoming real passive smoke). But it is very unlikely that non-smokers
stand motionless 4 inches directly above the tip of a cigarette, as the sensor was positioned
for these measurements. Thus even the number of cigarettes estimated above
to reach the safety limits is understated.
[**] EPA data1990a, Table C-2, pages C-19, 20
[***] Based on the lower exposure limit for tar volatile compounds
[****] EPA 1990b

If the scenario described in the table above were undertaken in real life,
the smokers in the room would run out of oxygen long before
reaching the limit even for methyl chloride.

My letter to the Canadian/Ontario Cancer Society;

webmaster@ontario.cancer.ca

Hello;
In review of your latest news release I was amazed in the level of inaccuracies being promoted to the public in assistance of the smoking bans in cars campaign. Among others in sharp contrast to the highest commuter rates in Los Angeles reported yesterday at 75 hours annual average spent commuting, as the highest average in North America, your daily averages of children in cars is well above double and approaching triple that number.

"No safe level" is only a reflection of your own ignorance, as it offers nothing of use to anyone aside from it's obvious use in the promotions of fear. The emotional blackmail provided in the use of children to sell your poison, is no largely held secret, people understand exactly how you, as any other misleading advertisers, make use of the tools of the advertising trade.

I will not go further into the details suffice to say, what you are promoting as Dr. Simon Chapman of the British Medical Journal described is the "spoiled identity" presumed guilt and slander by wide brush. More directly a promotion of targeted bigotry.

Is it sufficient to say disease management in place of cures can not exist, without divesting to the lowest common denominator? Further to suggest you would also support the Nazi methods we saw in the past which closely parallel your strategies today, as a prescribed cure for the ills of society?

Those promotions have a way of getting out of hand, recently in Ireland a cultural group defined as the Polish were named and distinguished as a hazard to Health Care and drain on the economy. How long will it be before the Cancer Society follows their international partners? How long will it take before your brand of "public grooming" leads us to a Canadian version of the death camps to protect the "right people"?

It only took Hitler 10 years and the W.H.O. with a rigid performance time frame in place, seems to be trying to beat his record.

There is no excuse for enabled hatred especially that which is enabled by organizations the public has grown to trust. I see it as shameful a charity I have always supported and promoted personally, has decided to travel so far down a road, which is intent on the destruction of personal rights of autonomy by directly and punishing coercive means and now dares to interfere in the relationships between a parent and their own children to suit those ends. If child abuse is the issue why not utilize the laws we already have in place? I would suggest it is well known among the proponents no harm or abuse actually occurred.

As a measure of your statistical accuracy; explain why, if the most universal effect of smoking is addiction why non smokers are not also addicted to the smoke?

If a parallel to smoking related diseases is to be found between smokers and those exposed to second hand smoke, an "in context" risk evaluation is required. If the most significant effect is dependency, regardless of the toxicity of any other effects, no other effect could be seen in a higher frequency than dependency.

How many non smokers are addicted to second hand smoke? Now tell me how legitimate are the fears you are promoting?

Your organization has crossed the line of what I consider criminality and human rights abuse and I will for one, be relieved when society awakens and decides to prosecute those crimes. Public Health is well described in the history books under the name Eugenics and it's prominence in Hitler?s Germany is also well known.

Most of us did not forget, nor are we likely to forget any time soon.

The anti smoker astro-turf crowd are obviously well represented here.

I am not surprised the big industry lobbies selling smoking patches and drugs [10 billion dollar industry selling patched poison I hear] would stoop so low as to use emotional Black mail to sell their poor me tales of woe.

It was always about the money and how they can make us pay more. It really surprises me, how few are intelligent enough to see through these protection scams. The children need protection, smoking bartenders need protection from their own smoke?

What ever gets you through the night, or past that next bank payment I suppose.

When you hear "there is no safe level" maybe you should start to realize, they are only admitting ignorance, using the term to scare people into following along, with what ever hair brained policy they dreamed up.

Public Health used to be called Eugenics. It was used to protect companies from prosecution by blaming all harms on the individual, while encouraging individuals to blame each other. The bigotry which was inspired was never completely relinquished even today.

Hitler used the same protection racket to secure his power and maintain authority. He was the first to use the term second hand smoke to his advantage.

Perhaps instead of having politics shoved down their throats children should be allowed to be children. They could be taught a little more history, so they can avoid the same mistakes we made not that long ago and are now apparently prepared to make once again.

Disease management is an avoidance of finding the cures which would no doubt embarrass many industry players, who are likely already more educated than they are prepared to admit. Now that we have mapped the human genome, real cures might have been only months away.

Why change a long term scientific direction? Now with health scare reforms firmly in place the charities stealing your money, under false pretenses will no longer seek the cures for cancers, heart or respiratory diseases, but will manage diseases indefinitely instead.

It is just a lot more profitable, anyone can understand that and who could blame them? 6 figure salaries among charity board members is the norm, inflation requires they move to 7 figures just to keep up with the Joneses.

@ Kevin

Oh my holly hell, please do not tell me you are comparing passing a bill to protect children from smoke to the actions of Hitler !!!!!

Surely the dangers of smoking are easy to see and so if a bill is passed to protect children from 'essentially' smoking their parents cigarettes that can only be a good thing ??

Thanks, Kevin. Now we have to invoke Godwin's Law and end this talk.

Cars and Kids

Children are the best weapons the anti-smokers have. Children have been used since the beginning of this war on smokers. They say, save the Children at all cost. The only problem is, they want to sell Smoking Cessation Products, not save Children.

They constantly state, Second Hand Smoke causes every illness known to man. They do studies by the dozens to prove their statements. All they end up doing is make a laughing stock of science. They are so active in their attempts to attract funds from the ACS and the RWJF (Johnson & Johnson) they continue to falsify their findings and mislead the public. It?s gotten to the point they use other fraudulent studies as proof of their new findings.

If we use their own figures from the EPA standards, we find some very interesting new falsehoods. They say? smoke pollution in cars is 23x worse than in homes!" The average smoker exhales less than 500 mg per day of SHS, say 21-75mg during a 95 minute Car trip. We will discount the fact that the average Car exhales at least 2.2 MILLION mg Per Day of exhaust much of which finds it's way INSIDE the Car.

It would require a minimum of 117 smokers smoking in a car for 1 hour with all the windows tightly sealed to reach the EPA established potential Risk Levels of Respiratory Toxins.

We keep hearing, there are 4,000 toxins in SHS. The Anti?s have a problem there also. So far they can only identify 435 of them. Of those identified they can?t reach a consensus on the ones that are carcinogenic. They start at 40 and go up to about 60. They never seem to agree. They always forget the forget basic premises of the dose makes the poison. It?s as easy as, one aspirin will cure a headache but a whole bottle will kill.

The fact is, all the Anti?s can come up with is a Baby Aspirin or less. What they do have is scare tactics and millions to buy smoking bans.

Toxic chemicals behind 'new car smell'
More concern than SHS.

Strange how simply opening a window is sufficient to ventilate the toxic environment found inside an automobile from the materials the vehicle is made of yet a"hurricane" is required to ventilate tobacco smoke. I have to agree with Vince, kids should be "banned" from automobiles altogether....

Toxic chemicals behind 'new car smell': report
Last Updated: Monday, March 26, 2007 | 7:12 PM ET
CBC News
A new report from a U.S. environmental group suggests the "new car smell" long beloved by the purchasers of vehicles could be a sign of harmful chemicals inside the car.

Much of the smell comes from plastics and materials used inside the car, from the steering wheel to the dashboard to the carpets ? parts often made with chemicals including flame retardants, plasticizers and other chemicals that can give off gas or leach into the environment.

The Ecology Centre, a Michigan-based environmental group, tested components in the interiors of 200 new-model cars for toxic chemicals including bromine, chlorine, lead and other heavy metals. The chemicals "can be harmful when inhaled or ingested and may lead to severe health impacts such as birth defects, learning disabilities and cancer," the report notes.

The group rated the cars according to relative level of health and environmental concern associated with the chemicals in the vehicle, in comparison with other vehicles tested.

The cars of most concern included the Nissan Versa, Chevrolet Aveo and Kia Rio, which all rated above four on the five-point scale. The Chevy Cobalt, Chrysler PT Cruiser and Volvo V50 station wagon were among those rated as "of least concern."

The Ecology Centre's ratings do not offer an absolute measure of health risk or chemical exposure, the study notes. However, its investigation found some toxic chemicals at levels five to ten times higher in new cars than would be found in an average office or home.

"The nose is great at detecting small amounts of a chemical. If you can smell something, it's there," said Ernie Pokopchuk, an assistant professor in chemistry at the University of Winnipeg.

Pokopchuk said some of the chemicals identified in the story could have serious effects.

"They can be irritating, might be something as simple as making your eyes kind of red, feel like they're burning a little bit, irritation like that, or it can be as severe, with a high enough dosage, it can lead to health concerns, birth defects, cancers," he said.

Vince Gabrielli, manager of lease and commercial sales at a Winnipeg Dodge dealership, says this is the first he's heard about the issue.

"Obviously, it's a concern for most consumers," he said. "Manufacturers are always going to be wondering if there's enough toxins to be harmful to the public, and if that's the case, then they'll probably put restrictions on it and hopefully get rid of that."

Some companies, such as Volvo, are already selling cars with interiors marketed as healthier. In Volvo's case, the approach controls the use of nickel in dashboard controls, keys and safety-belt buckles and chemicals used in upholstery fabric and leather.

"Safety is much more than that small probability [of] what if I get into a crash," says Michael Rawluk at a Winnipeg Volvo dealership. "It's [also] how does this car impact my health?"

The Ecology Center hopes this study will push car manufacturers to use safer products in the future, noting that toxic chemicals are not required to make interior auto parts, and some manufacturers have begun to phase them out.

For people who already own cars listed as "of concern" in the study, the centre recommends using solar reflectors in the windshield, because heat and ultraviolet rays accelerate the release of chemicals; the centre also recommends opening the windows for a few minutes before driving off.

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2007/03/26/new-car-smell.html