Electronic cigarettes are hailed as the healthier, more considerate alternative to traditional tobacco, but new research may force those claims to go up in smoke.

It took a long time, and a lot of public education, but cigarette smoking is at an all time low. The American Cancer Society reports that “cigarette smoking has decreased among adults in the United States from about 42% of the population in 1965 to about 19% in 2011.” Before you start your victory dance, that still means that about 43.8 million (or 1 in every 5) adults smoke cigarettes.

In recent years, electronic cigarettes have emerged as a possible antidote to our cultural obsession with smoking. Rather than burning tobacco, these battery-powered devices use heat to vaporize liquid nicotine. This delivers the desired buzz, but produces no smoke, which means anti-smoking regulations don’t apply.

Sounds great, right? Smokers get the nicotine they crave and the rest of us get to breathe clean air. There’s even some evidence that people who switch from real tobacco to electronic cigarettes are more likely than those who use nicotine patches to quit smoking altogether. Unfortunately, new research also suggests that these hand-held vaporizers might not be the benign substitute that e-cigarette companies want us to think they are (surprise, surprise).

A study published recently in France’s National Consumer Institute claims that electronic cigarettes contain “a significant quantity of carcinogenic molecules” despite the fact that they don’t burn real tobacco.

“Using a new method of testing, researchers found that in three out of the ten e-cigs studied, the level of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, came close to the amount in conventional cigarettes,” reports The Week. “Furthermore, a highly toxic molecule called acrolein was detected “sometimes at levels even higher than in traditional cigarettes,” said Thomas Laurenceau, chief editor of the magazine.

These findings confirm what the US Food and Drug Administration hinted at back in 2009. At the time, the agency, which has not approved electronic cigarettes, said that some samples contained ingredients found in anti-freeze.

If this is true, and electronic cigarettes do contain all of the same cancer-causing crap as traditional tobacco products, is it wrong to exempt them from smoking bans? Is allowing these vaporizers to be used indoors, even on airplanes, a dangerous hypocrisy that puts the rest of us at risk?

New York City Mayor Bloomberg seems to think so. Electronic cigarettes are the focus of the ban-happy Mayor’s latest health campaign. “The city’s Health Committee is considering several proposed ordinances related to cigarettes, including one that would classify e-cigarettes as tobacco products,” reports The Week. If successful, e-cig smokers would be out in the cold with their tobacco-smoking counterparts.

Such a ban, just like laws against traditional smoking in public places, is controversial. Should people be allowed to decide what they put into their bodies, harmful or not? Or is it the government’s place to protect public health by limiting the use of both real and electronic cigarettes? Share your thoughts in a comment.

Related on Ecosalon:

Protecting Yourself From The 20 Percent of People Who Still Smoke

What’s Behind The Surprise Global Spike In Female Smoking?

Image: Ibrahim Ba’im and Equazcion

The post Electronic Cigarettes Under Fire: Hidden Risk Or Effective Cure? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Why more women are lighting up despite the risks.

We fall victim to lung cancer without even putting a stick to our lips and are encumbered with mounting pollution from flicked cigarette filter waste. So why would an increasing number of women add insult to fatal injury by smoking?

The question is like the unfunny butt of a cruel joke and is puzzling everyone – clean air advocates, anti-tobacco lobbyists and  health care experts. We’ve got the tools to quit – the nicotine patch and the Honeyrose herbal cigarettes – along with public restrictions and societal pressures. Yet more of us are puffing away in our cars, hotel rooms, Euro cafes or any other designated spot just to get that fix.

It’s one thing to watch my stubborn, 72-year-old Aunt Dorothy ducking outside to smoke at family events (despite a bad stomach and a husband who suffers from emphysema); it’s another matter to watch young, healthy women taking up the addictive habit to deal with stress or to control their weight – the primary causes for the growing trend say the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control which have been monitoring the numbers.

Latest reports show female smokers make up nearly 20 percent of the world’s tobacco smokers, and that figure is likely to grow due to successful ad campaigns targeting women, with consumption growing fastest among younger women and girls.

As a result, the rate of deaths among this population is also likely to grow – adding to the 5 million who now die each year worldwide from tobacco use and passive smoking. The WHO says the number could reach 8 million deaths by 2030.

To combat the millions the tobacco industry spends each year on ads, health advocates are now trying to step up public awareness campaigns along with anti-smoking restrictions, taxes and bans, especially in low income, developing nations with few controls.

In Indonesia, for example, the tobacco industry is the second largest generator of revenue and a main employer of the third world population – and cigarettes are widely advertised to keep that revenue flowing.  The ads are the opposite of ours, attempting to play up the cool factor of smoking American brands.

Meanwhile, the American Cancer Society is grappling with the contradiction of reduced lung cancer cases in men the past few years along with an increased rate in women. What’s puzzling is that women who don’t smoke are more apt to get lung cancer than men who don’t smoke – this despite the fact more men die of the disease than women – a projected 86,000 men in 2010 compared with 71,000 women. It is believed estrogen is a possible factor.

It all begs the question: If we know we are more prone in general, then why are more young women lighting up?

According to a recent NPR forum, researchers find women have a harder time keeping their vows to quit and tend to succumb to relapse, relying on tobacco to cope with anxiety.  As someone who “craved” a smoke whenever I stepped foot in a newsroom, I can relate.

Research from the Yale School of Medicine found cigarettes fill many roles for women who smoke in “reducing negative mood, even enhancing positive mood, managing the stress of daily life and also managing appetite and weight gain.”

It’s true, many gain up to 15 pounds the first month they quit. And often it is the scale that prompts women watching their weight to relapse.  For this reason, researchers are studying certain therapies to assist in quitting, such as exercising to control both weight and stress. Environmentalists want to link another motivator: personal responsibility in  reducing pollution that turns Earth into an ashtray. An estimated several trillion cigarette butts are flicked on sidewalks, beaches, nature trails and other public places worldwide each year.

The non-profit CigaretteLitter.com works to discourage the blight, arguing the toxic residue in filters are not just unsightly, but damaging to our environment – causing destructive and even fatal fires each year. And the site WhyQuit.com offers blueprints for quitting to those who care deeply about the planet but still crave that Salem Light every time they sip a cocktail at the neighborhood watering hole.

Some women simply opt for cold turkey – which many attest is the only way to go- and stay away from friends who smoke, just like over-eaters might not want to hang with other emotional eaters.

Or, you can go the way of the teen daughters in  Keeping up with the Kardashians, a reality show that strongly influences young female viewers.  In an anti-smoking themed episode, stage mama Kris Jenner is scared into quitting when she witnesses her girls puffing away (dad helped by buying them the rose and marshmallow substitutes).  It got the kids grounded, but mom saw the light.

It goes to show, watching our mothers smoke does seem to condone the habit, just as watching our screen and pop idols making it look so cool and inviting. The recent wave of shocking ads depicting cancer victims smoking and cigarettes as trashy lipstick might thwart the modeling of bad habits, but who knows?

As a kid, I remember flushing my dad’s Silva Thins down the toilet until he quit. Even so, I lit up in college, just as my mother did.

images: Saneboy; ; Tracy Harrison; Meadowrise; Design Inspiration

The post What’s Behind the Surprise Global Spike in Female Smoking? appeared first on EcoSalon.

I had asthma as a kid. This meant that I was pretty much dependent on chemicals to get oxygen into my lungs and that I wouldn’t step out of the house without an abuterol in hand. Soccer game? I had an inhaler stashed by the bench. Prom night? My understanding boyfriend carried it in his pocket. It wasn’t the worst way to grow up, but it definitely had its memorable moments – usually caused by an unfortunately empty inhaler canister and a habit of breathing.

So to this day, when I see someone light up a cigarette, I watch with a secret kind of awe. It’s like watching someone walk on the moon without an oxygen tank. How is this possible that they aren’t collapsing to the ground like a goldfish out of water? Since my lungs would be vomited out on the sidewalk if I took a drag, this is perversely fascinating. I want to walk up to them and knock on their chest to see if they actually have lungs of steel. (And yet, I don’t.)

The one upside to asthma? If you are really really lucky to outgrow it, you really really appreciate your new-found ability to breath without chemicals. But unfortunately, if someone steps into my air space with a cigarette, I have an immediate problem. Sure, it’s not my business if Private Citizen wants to smoke. But it is my problem because Private Citizen’s second-hand smoke is “a toxic cocktail consisting of poison and carcinogens. There are over 4000 chemical compounds in secondhand smoke; 200 of which are known to be poisonous, and upwards of 60 have been identified as carcinogens.” And this is one problem that no one needs.

The American Heart Association estimates that around 23 percent of men and 18 percent of women smoke. Sure, that’s better than “Mad Men” times when doctors were lighting cigarettes for pregnant mothers. But it still means we’re going to run across a smoke cloud or two in our daily adventures.

I handle these errant smoke clouds by treating the world as a giant track and field event. When I encounter smokers, I get out of their space as quickly as possible and keep my anti-smoking opinions to myself. (However, an awesomely sweet guy did once offer to put his cigarette out on my tongue when I asked him to snuff it.)

But still, sprinting is problematic. First, it’s not always practical to race around someone in high heels/pushing a baby carriage/walking with someone who doesn’t recognize you are holding your breath and are about to collapse into a heap of pathetic. Second, a good friend of mine is a smoker who hates it when people run past him as he’s carrying a biological weapon. Can’t we just all get along?

So what to do? If you are traveling, there are steps you can take. Ask for a non-smoking room or, better yet, book a smoke free hotel. FreshStay offers a great resource on finding smoke-free hotels. If you are hosting a party, offer up alternatives to smoking – gum, water, snacks. Or ask them to step aside – though your average smoker is a reasonable human being who knows his or her smoke is going to bother people, so he or she is doing this anyway.

And in the end, if someone really doesn’t get the hint? You can pull out a Breath of Life Emergency Escape Mask and start sucking down air. If you’re going to make a point, go big.

Image: yourdon

The post Protecting Yourself From the 20 Percent of People Who Still Smoke appeared first on EcoSalon.

He’s baaack!

You’ve all heard of Richard Pombo, right? For 14 years, he represented a real-life version of the smoke monster from Lost to environmentalists everywhere. The Tracy, CA cattle rancher was even given a cute nickname by President George W. Bush: “The Marlboro Man.” From 1993 to 2007 Pombo represented the 11th Congressional District, which runs from Morgan Hill to Danville along the east side of I-680, including farm towns like Manteca and Lodi.

So why is he so toxic?

Pombo introduced bills to expand offshore oil drilling (“Drill, baby drill!”), rewrite the Endangered Species Act (“Die, Bambi, die!”) and increase logging on public lands (“Fell, baby, fell!”). He even advocated more commercial whale hunting (I guess dolphins and baby seals weren’t big enough game), and infamously that environmental regulation “owes more to communism than to any other philosophy.” Seems reasonable. I could swear the last time I went hiking that the wind in the willows seemed to be whispering Marxist propaganda at me.

Then came 2006. Environmentalists spent more than $1 million to help Democrat Jerry McNerney, a former wind energy executive, upset the rootin’ tootin’ pollutin’ Marlboro Man. But this week it appears that Pombo will be coming out on top and reinvigorating his political career – and worse, his political agenda. He’s running in the Republican primary in what may be California’s hottest congressional race of the June 8 election.

His district will include, wait for it, Yosemite National Park. That sound you’re hearing is a thousand woodland creatures screaming collectively.

Pombo and the other three candidates, state Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced; former Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson; and Fresno City Councilman Larry Westerlund, have similar positions on the issues. They all have angled for lower taxes, an overturn of President Barack Obama’s health care law, and new rules to waive the Endangered Species Act to allow more water to be pumped to farmers from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Can’t evolution of flora and fauna be stifled by the law? What good is lawmaking anyway if it can’t put limitations on everything, even nature?

The Stetson-donning Pombo, has stated that if elected, he’d not only start with 14 years seniority, but with insight into how Congress works, particularly when it comes to water and wildlife laws.

Here’s something to chew on: If the GOP wins back the House in November, Pombo has said that by January he could be chairman again of the powerful House Natural Resources Committee. Perfect!

“This is a tight race,” he said. “The state, the Central Valley, doesn’t have a lot of time. We’re in trouble. We need somebody who is going to be effective immediately. That’s what I bring to the table.”

What are greenies doing about this? Not much, I’m afraid. (Really, with this kind of threat to the environment, how can anyone not be afraid?) The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund has spent around $65,000 on radio ads calling Pombo “another corrupt politician.” (Been there, done that, guys.) The Humane Society Legislative Fund has distributed thousands of mailers – which is kind of counter-intuitive if the mailers are not printed on recycled paper, which you just know Pombo and his ilk will call out. And the League of Conservation Voters put Pombo on its “Dirty Dozen List,” normally reserved for sitting members of Congress – do they not realize that The Dirty Dozen is the title of a movie starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas and Donald Sutherland – precisely the kind of “man’s men” that deems the classification a compliment?

“Having Pombo represent a district that includes Yosemite National Park is like electing Godzilla as mayor of Tokyo,” said Warner Chabor, CEO of the California League of Conservation Voters. No, Warner, it’s not. Godzilla was a stranger in a strange land. Richard Pombo is a danger in endangered land.

During the campaign, he has caught controversy for once taking money from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and also for billing taxpayers $5,000 after taking his family in 2003 on an RV trip of national parks. I mean, come on. Californians, when you vote in this election next week, take a look outside your window and hum the “This Land is Your Land” tune. When you do that, remember that those lyrics are little more than Communist what’s-mine-is-yours propaganda. Do you like the view from your den? Enjoy it now, because it’s about to become Marlboro country.

The post The ‘Marlboro Man’ Returns to Ruffle Green Feathers appeared first on EcoSalon.

“The beauty of quitting is, now that I’ve quit, I can have one, ’cause I’ve quit.” – Tom Waits

As a conscious human living in America you have probably been aware for some time now that smoking is bad. It increases the incidence of lung cancer, heart disease, birth defects and dead puppies. But young adults of the 18-to-25 variety – especially those of the lady persuasion – are smoking more than any other age group, even though they’ve grown up with the most complete access to information on smoking’s attendant health risks. Seriously, is this because of Mad Men?

Health organizations and anti-smoking activists have herded American smokers out of the public sphere, hustling them away from parks, bars, restaurants, airports, federal buildings, and malls, generally for the greater good. Fewer smokers lighting-up in fewer places is good news for public health and sanitation. Yet while the number of American smokers has decreased almost by half since the 1960s, the number of young adults who smoke has remained steady for the last decade. At a certain point, anti-smoking ads featuring hundreds of ‘dead’ baby dolls stop being effective and start being ridiculous. Demonizing smoking as being its own separate brand of evil (as opposed to obesity or binge drinking) doesn’t do much to reduce smoking, although it does go a long way toward making nonsmokers feel morally superior.

Accepting that for a certain subset of the population smoking will most likely always be a popular recreational activity may be more useful in reducing its environmental impact than trying to shame smokers into hiding. The electronic cigarette, or ‘e-cigarette’, a reusable, battery-powered nicotine-delivery system is a definite step in the right direction. It’s still chocked full of all those hard-to-pronounce chemicals like acetylpyrazine and terpineol (in other words, it’s still not good for you), and its legal status in many countries is still under review. It vaporizes a liquid nicotine cartridge (rather than using fire, as a traditional cigarette), has no disposable filters to end up in the trash or on the sidewalk, and comes recommended as a better alternative to cigarettes, pipes and cigars by the American Association of Public Health Physicians.

The e-cigarette isn’t green by any stretch of the imagination. Quitting smoking, or not starting at all, is still ideal. But anything that reduces the incidence of second-hand smoke and hazardous litter is something worth investigating. Plus, you’ll still look totally cool puffing away. Don Draper might just approve.

Image: SuperFantastic

The post Things That Will Probably Kill You, Vol. 2 appeared first on EcoSalon.

We didn’t see a fire, but there’s smoke and ongoing chatter about it all over the Web this week. More taxes and stricter regulations of tobacco sales and use are being put into place all around the world. At the same time, a new scientific discovery could get us closer to curing lung cancer.

First the good news. Researchers found a cluster of genes that are “active” in lung cancer patients, even in their healthy tissue and especially in their wind pipes, that could help predict whether smokers are going to develop lung cancer and help them get early treatment which is more effective in fighting lung cancer.

But why smoke and chance it with cancer or other health problems, or risk exposing others?

California is playing it safe with a ban on smoking at public parks and beaches. The Chickasaw nation banned smoking on all its properties. And Utah planned new taxes on tobacco, too.

Next month, Michigan will become the latest state to ban smoking in public buildings and workplaces including pubs and restaurants.

The states may be following the fed’s lead; President Obama put stricter tax laws and regulations on the sales of cigarettes online effective as of April 1st.

We were happy that on April 7th, global political and thought leaders who spoke at a World Health Day conference, like New York’s Mayor Bloomberg, rallied to make urban living healthier through support of smoking cessation programs (along with greater focus on clean air, water and efficient transportation).

Two more studies that are galvanizing enough to make you quit cold turkey…

The American Lung Association disturbingly finds that “Blacks are hit the hardest when it comes to both developing and dying from lung cancer,” in part due to tobacco marketers’ seemingly biased efforts to push menthol cigarettes to African American consumers.

And the Royal College of Physicians in England calls for a ban on smoking in vehicles and public places where children frequently visit. Why? Because secondhand smoke, according to their report, causes middle ear diseases, lower respiratory infections, asthma and can even contribute to sudden infant death.

Australia is mulling more taxation and banning of cigarettes, too.

Indonesia, a country for which cigarettes are a key economic driver, seemed quite the loner, instead of part of this world clique, on Wednesday, when the nation’s trade minister refuted a U.S. ban on sales of clove cigarettes. She said the ban unfairly effects one of Indonesia’s biggest industries, and violates international rules set forth by the World Trade Organization.

Is anti-smoking sentiment going to sink economies? Or is banning smokers from public pollution a good green move? Read up with the links above and below, and give us your two cents in a comment or Tweet to @ecosalon.

Basic Reading:

“Blacks are hit the hardest when it comes to both developing and dying from lung cancer. A new report from the American Lung Association paints a grim picture of how environmental factors, biological factors, cultural attitudes and biases in the health-care system conspire to make this deadly disease even deadlier among members of this minority group.” – Medical news feature for Health Day by Amanda Gardner

“Cigarette smoke causes 90 percent of all cases of lung cancer, which kills 1.2 million people a year globally. But only about 10 percent of smokers ever develop lung cancer, although they often die of other causes such as heart disease, stroke or emphysema.” – John O’Callaghan, Reuters health writer’s story on a group of genes that can help doctors spot lung cancer early

“Surveys throughout Australia in recent years show an incremental increase in support for smoking bans in bars, restaurants and clubs to the point that it regularly tops 80 per cent”¦If the proposed ban was enough to make smokers feel unloved, a National Preventative Health Taskforce plan to hit them with a $6.50-a-packet tax increase must make them feel positive outcasts.” – An opinion editorial by Terry Sweetman for CourierMail

Further Resources:

A U.S. government website with hands-on advice to help you quit smoking, or help you cheer a smoker into dropping the habit

Phillip Morris cancels cigarette price hikes in Japan to avoid further fall in sales, there, reports Kyodo News / Japan Times

Farmer seeks review of anti-tobacco laws in Jakarta, Indonesia

Image: Jason Anfinsen

The post EcoMeme: Non-Smoking Section Expands appeared first on EcoSalon.