US study just a smoke ring, say researchers

By THERESA GARNER

Research which claims inhaling other people's smoke is not harmful is being ignored by health experts as New Zealand moves towards tough smoke-free laws.

The findings, reported in the British Medical Journal, have prompted an international furore over the study's methods and its ties to the tobacco industry.

In New Zealand, where impending legislation would ban smoking in bars, cafes, casinos and RSAs, health campaigners claim the tobacco industry is using the study in a "last-ditch foray on second-hand smoke".

The American study, which looked at people whose spouses smoked, acknowledged funding from the tobacco industry.

It concluded that there were no significant associations between second-hand smoke and deaths from coronary heart disease and lung cancer.

Author James Enstrom, of the University of California, said the results did not support a causal relation, "although they do not rule out a small effect".

The backlash from medical bodies and health groups has been echoed here.



ASH spokesman Dr Murray Laugesen dismissed the American study as neither independent nor reliable.

"It's an oddball," said the man whose own research finding that second-hand smoke causes an estimated 388 deaths a year backs the Ministry of Health's current advertisement.

Ministry public health programmes manager Graeme Gillespie said there was overwhelming evidence that second-hand smoke kills, and the ministry would continue to support this message.

"Second-hand smoke has the same carcinogens and other chemicals as smoke being inhaled," he said.

Dr Laugesen said the study's use of data dating from the 1950s was unreliable because back then everyone in the United States and here was exposed to smoke.

"You got it in the streets, buses, pubs, workplace, canteen, cars. There was no getting away from it," he said.

For this reason, it was "impossible" to make a finding which relied on whether one's spouse was a smoker.

The study authors, who say they were subject to rigorous peer review, and deny tobacco industry influence, won some praise. London's Sunday Telegraph, in an article entitled "Warning: Health Police Can Addle Your Brain", said the passive smoking debate was "engulfed in a smog of political correctness and dubious science".

"Maybe we've gone past the point where anyone cares about the facts."

New Zealand tobacco giant British American Tobacco said the study was important. It "confirms that many of the estimates of the risk are overstated in the extreme".

Spokesman Carrick Graham said the Government should take account of it.

"We believe the study illustrates that calls for bans on public smoking cannot be justified on the basis of chronic health risk for non-smokers."

* The Press Council has upheld an Otago University complaint over a National Business Review article last September relating to a passive smoking report produced for the Ministry of Health by Dr Laugesen and Professor Alistair Woodward.

The article, headed "Statisticians say ads' aims justify the lies" was about the validity of estimates of deaths from passive smoking, and how the research was used in a ministry advertising campaign.

The complaint upheld by the council centred on the article's claim that the research had been "debunked", the incorrect suggestion that the researchers supported false advertising, and incorrect paraphrasing.