Thursday, July 29, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Letter to County Councilman Barbara Fraser
Dear Councilman Fraser,
I found an interesting survey conducted just before the November 2006 election in Ohio. The survey found that smoking bans with exemptions are preferred by both the general public and likely voters over complete bans. This supports our contention that the exemptions in your St. Louis County smoking ban made it more popular with County voters than it would have been had a strict smoking ban that included bars had been proposed. Here is the relevant passage from the attached survey:
"Smoking Ban without exception
Yes 42.6 47.7
No 46.9 43.9
Undecided 10.5 8.4
Smoking Ban with exceptions
Yes 51.4 52.5
No 33.8 36.1
Undecided 14.8 11.4
A proposed ban on smoking in public places without exceptions garners 43% support from the general public and 47% opposition. However, the figures are reversed among likely voters, where the proposition leads 48 to 44%. This was the only example where the preferences of the public in general and likely voters differ for ballot proposals.
A proposal to ban smoking in public places with some exceptions was more popular, with a majority of both the general public and likely voters supporting it."
http://www.uakron.edu/bliss/docs/FallPollReportFall2006draft2_2_.pdf
Sincerely,
Bill Hannegan
314.367.3779
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Bill Hannegan
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11:50 PM
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Thursday, July 15, 2010
Letter to Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Dear Dr. Klein,
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Bill Hannegan
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9:07 AM
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Sunday, July 04, 2010
Martin Pion's reply and my answer
Dear Mr. Pion,
No one argues that any ventilation or filtration system can perfectly eliminate smoke exposure in a space where people are smoking. But we based our campaign against the St. Louis City and County smoking ban on the belief that air filtration and air cleaning systems, such as those installed at Herbie's Vintage 72, could hugely reduce the presence of all secondhand smoke components in bar air including all carcinogens and all gases.
It is very distressing to realize that Clayton and St. Louis City aldermen and County Councilmen were being told all along that the effect of our air cleaning and filtration systems was merely cosmetic and that dangerous particles and gases were readily passing through the air filtration and air cleaning machines back into bar air. The implication is that the machines at Herbie's only made the situation more hazardous by removing the sight and smell of smoke, thereby making patrons and workers feel comfortable and safe, yet allowing threatening particles and gases to accumulate!
I would like to know if Smoke Free St. Louis has any evidence for this charge against air filtration and air cleaning technology. Clearly their misrepresentation has already hurt local air filtration companies and will hurt the St. Louis bars and restaurants which have installed this air cleaning and filtration technology come January.
Bill Hannegan
314.367.3779
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Bill Hannegan
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11:11 AM
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Friday, July 02, 2010
Letter to Smoke-Free St. Louis
"While ventilation systems can help reduce the smell and sight of cigarette smoke, they are not capable of getting rid of all of the carcinogens. Most cancer-causing particles and all cancer-causing gasses are too small to be trapped by filters."
Air filtration systems have installed in Clayton, St. Louis City and St. Louis County bars and restaurants that are capable of removing all the components of secondhand smoke, including all carcinogens, from the air. No particle of any sort is too small to be captured. Can you provide some documentation of your claim?
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Bill Hannegan
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11:40 AM
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Sunday, June 27, 2010
Jace Smith's Misstatement in News-Leader
Springfield Councilmen, smoking ban proponents in both St. Louis and Springfield argue that only strict smoking bans should be passed in order to cut heart attack rates. I wanted to let you know that the most comprehensive study yet conducted concerning the public health effects of smoking bans has found that smoking bans do not decrease mortality rates, hospital admissions orheart attack rates in communities that impose them. The study was conducted by researchers from the Rand Corporation, Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin and the Congressional Budget Office. The National Bureau of Economic Research has already circulated this study, CHANGES IN U.S. HOSPITALIZATION AND MORTALITY RATES FOLLOWING SMOKING BANS, as a working paper, and it will soon be published in a major medical journal. http://www.nber.org/papers/ The researchers summarize their study: "U.S. state and local governments are increasingly restricting smoking in public places. This paper analyzes nationally representative databases, including the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, to compare short-term changes in mortality and hospitalization rates in smoking-restricted regions with control regions. In contrast with smaller regional studies, we find that workplace bans are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines in mortality or hospital admissions for myocardial infarction or other diseases. An analysis simulating smaller studies using subsamples reveals that large short-term increases in myocardial infarction incidence following a workplace ban are as common as the large decreases reported in the published literature." I also want to alert you to the October publication of a major heart attack study in the European Journal of Epidemiology. The study also found no association between heart attacks and smoking bans. Please find this study, ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SMOKING BANS AND INCIDENCE OF ACUTE MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION, attached to this e-mail. Dr. Michael Siegel of the Boston University School of Public Health says of this study: "Importantly, this published study was not considered by the Institute of Medicine committee which reviewed this issue and released its report in October of last year. It was also not considered in published meta-analyses on this topic. Because of the high sample size of this study, it is likely that inclusion of this study in the previous meta-analyses would have negated their results." Councilmen, when St. Louis City and County were considering a smoking ban last summer, we asked Dr. Geoffrey Kabat, PhD, Senior Epidemiologist at Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who conducted the largest secondhand smoke study ever done, completed too late to be included in Surgeon General Carmona's 2006 Report, to summarize his secondhand smoke research as it relates to smoking bans. Dr. Kabat wrote to the St. Louis County Council:
Jace Smith, director of Missouri State Advocacy for the American Heart Association, in his News-Leader June 26th op-ed, "Support Workplace Smoking ban in Springfield", cites a study published last October in Journal of the American College of Cardiology which found that smoking bans cut heart attack rates 17 percent in communities that impose them. But the Kansas University researchers who conducted that study now admit they made a mistake and have published a correction of their study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The corrected rate of decline is 8 percent. Boston University researcher Dr. Michael Siegel points out that 8 percent is "a rate of decline not significantly different from the levels of decline in heart attacks that are being observed in the absence of smoking bans, which have varied between 5 percent and 10 percent per year in many communities."
http://content.onlinejacc.org/
http://kansas.watchdog.org/
http://tobaccoanalysis.
nonsmokers and the use of air filtration, to reduce all components of environmental tobacco smoke in establishments where smoking is permitted to the level of the air in non-smoking establishments, there is reason to believe that any risk would be undetectable."
Bar owners across Missouri fear the 11 percent business loss experienced by bars in Columbia. The best science does seem to indicate that workplace smoking can be tolerated by lawmakers if proper ventilation and air filtration is in place.
Sincerely,
Bill Hannegan
314.367.3779
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9:33 PM
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