Feather

I just caught the Penn&Teller "Bullshit!" episode regarding second-hand smoke (their position: health dangers of second-hand smoke = bullshit claim).

Any, I went and searched 'round the internet for any peer-reviewed articles regarding second-hand smoke and health problems. Amazingly, none of the various google combinations I tried yielded anything fruitful. And apparently websites (such as the American Lung Association site) aren't much help either (they kept referring back to the EPA study mentioned on Penn&Teller's show).

So my question for those professionals in the medical research field is this: are there any (more) peer reviewed articles (not mere studies) that link second-hand ("environmental") tobacco smoke to health risks?

Mad Kally

Penn and Teller are right. I'm a hospice nurse and I keep wondering where all these 2nd hand smoke cancer victims are. All of my primary lung cancer patients either are smokers or were. I ask them all. Same with most empysema patients. I like to do my own little surveys. Somtimes I will say "are you a smoker?" and they will say "No!", then I ask them if they ever smoked and they say, "oh yeah 40 years"

doghouse

You can search the medical literature at
medline

Try a term like "passive smoking"

Wyz_sub10

I worked on a study for the Workers Compensation Board of British Columbia. My portion of the work was the demonstrate the effects on a smoking environment on employees of the hospitality industry (waiting staff and bartenders, primarily).

There was nothing that indicated a correlation between second-hand smoke and illness/disease *under these cricumstances*.

Mind you, one of the considerations is that the vast majority of hospitality workers are tansient.

Friar Bellows

Well, I for one would rather rely on peer-reviewed research than "Penn & Teller" or the experiences of one nurse. It really is very simple to find peer-reviewed articles on passive smoking on the internet. Here's what I did, without knowing anything about online medical journals or meta-search sites like MedLine:

1) I went to Google and typed in "free medical journals".
2) I chose the first search result.
3) On the front page of that site, I randomly chose The British Medical Journal.
4) I went to the search page and entered "passive smoking" in the "Word(s) in Title or Abstract" field, choosing the "articles only" option.
5) I found 836 results.
6) I also checked if the journal was peer reviewed. It was.

Mad Kally

I'm also an Oncology Certified RN. (OCN) I believe the journals. I just have one question. Where are they?

Feather

Thanks, Friar. Next time I will remember to include "free" when searching with google for this sort of thing.

I tried a search for "peer reviewed medical journals" and the search wasn't very fruitful. At least it wasn't last night shortly before I posted this thread.

PS: I would never rely on a pair of comedians or the anecdotal evidence of one person. Being a graduate student in physics, I actually understand the importance of peer reviewed research. But thanks for the helpful hint.

Mad Kally

I would never rely on anecdotal evidence and comedians either. Just because I haven't run into any, does not mean they don't exist.

My first mistake was saying Penn and Teller are right. I really have no idea, and they are not scientists.

Wyz_sub10

Strictly speaking, they are not comedians either. They are slight-of-hand experts.

Mad Kally

This may sound stupid, but I never knew who Penn and Teller were or what they did until people mentioned the names and said they were atheists a few times here. For all I know they could be the guys with the tigers. lol