Reply #4: I'm sorry, there are too many factors here to nail anything down. [View All]

[politicat]

Pollution, to start with. Did they control for factors like urban pollution, rural pollution, etc? We know that environmentally related asthma - such as allergy related asthma, dust related asthma, and mechanical asthma - rates vary heavily by location and even by time (i.e. Phoenix in the 60s was an asthma sufferer's haven; now it is one of the worst places for someone with asthma in the US.)

Since a child has a rather high chance of getting asthma - 122 out of 1000 kids get asthma - the statistics can be difficult to read. If this is anything like the statistics in the less than credible second-hand smoke study, it will be used as scare tactics rather than real science.

I don't smoke, but I do dislike the constant nagging and brow-beating by the anti-smoking types. The ones I have met have run to hyperbole and a fascist attitude up to and including the advocacy of killing smokers. Given the choice of dealing with someone who smokes and someone who has made anti-smoking advocacy a religion and crusade.... I'll take the former.