Augusta Health Goes Smoke Free

Augusta County's largest employer is now smoke free. Augusta Health in Fishersville banned the use of all tobacco products on its campus.

[XD9mm]

WOW talk about trying to control your employees lives ....can't even enjoy a smoke or a dip when your not even on their property, that's just crazy ! I am so happy I work for myself ! I bet my employees are happy that I don't try to tell them how to live their lives either....My only rule is no cellphones while on the job site and that's only because some employees don't get the full concept of not being paid to text their girlfriends. I could never understand why employers want to play with an employee's urine either, I could care less what they do on their time.

[cavs24]

Wow talk about trying to control your employees lives. At least cell phones don't cause cancer.

[XD9mm]

your right they don't! but they do cause me loss of production when the girlfriend can't figure out what color bra and panties to wear for the day, then she texts back curious about what she should eat for breakfast, then texts back wondering who she should hang out with for the day, then she texts back wondering what to eat for lunch, texts are ok with me when we are in the truck driving from job to job, he can text her all he wants(when he's not the one driving), but when it's time to work that phone best be in the work truck and not in his pocket ! on average before I enforced the rule, he would waste about a hour of my time each day texting, which meant stopping what he was doing to do it. at the end of the week that meant I would pay him $60 just to text his girlfriend, see my point now ? I don't have any other rules except the obvious, no drinking or doing hard drugs on the job. Other than that I think I am pretty easy to work for !

[Patty]

Sounds illegal to me...an employer can't control what a person does on his/her time!

[Albemarle]

UVa Health is going smoke free in October, although not as severe! Cheers!

Personally, I can't agree with it but on the flipside, it does the community good. Smoking is proven to be bad for your health. Why not just eradicate the problem.

[Confederate1989]

FOX NEWS ARTICLE
March 8, 1998

Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer - official By Victoria Macdonald Health Correspondent

THE world's leading health organization has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect.

The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive smoking health risks. The World Health Organization, which commissioned the 12-centre, seven-country European study has failed to make the findings public, and has instead produced only a summary of the results in an internal report.

Despite repeated approaches, nobody at the WHO headquarters in Geneva would comment on the findings last week. At its International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon , France , which coordinated the study, a spokesman would say only that the full report had been submitted to a science journal and no publication date had been set.

The findings are certain to be an embarrassment to the WHO, which has spent years and vast sums on anti-smoking and anti-tobacco campaigns. The study is one of the largest ever to look at the link between passive smoking - or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)- and lung cancer, and had been eagerly awaited by medical experts and campaigning groups.

Yet the scientists have found that there was no statistical evidence that passive smoking caused lung cancer. The research compared 650 lung cancer patients with 1,542 healthy people. It looked at people who were married to smokers, worked with smokers, both worked and were married to smokers, and those who grew up with smokers.

The results are consistent with their being no additional risk for a person living or working with a smoker and could be consistent with passive smoke having a protective effect against lung cancer. The summary, seen by The Telegraph, also states: "There was no association between lung cancer risk and ETS exposure during childhood.

[Confederate1989]

As for secondhand smoke in the air, OSHA has stated outright that:

"Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)...It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded."
-Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec'y, OSHA, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997

Indeed it would.

Independent health researchers have done the chemistry and the math to prove how very very rare that would be.

As you're about to see in a moment.

In 1999, comments were solicited by the government from an independent Public and Health Policy Research group, Littlewood & Fennel of Austin, Tx, on the subject of secondhand smoke.

Using EPA figures on the emissions per cigarette of everything measurable in secondhand smoke, they compared them to OSHA's PELs.

The following excerpt and chart are directly from their report and their Washington testimony:

CALCULATING THE NON-EXISTENT RISKS OF ETS

"We have taken the substances for which measurements have actually been obtained--very few, of course, because it's difficult to even find these chemicals in diffuse and diluted ETS.

"We posit a sealed, unventilated enclosure that is 20 feet square with a 9 foot ceiling clearance.

"Taking the figures for ETS yields per cigarette directly from the EPA, we calculated the number of cigarettes that would be required to reach the lowest published "danger" threshold for each of these substances. The results are actually quite amusing. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a situation where these threshold limits could be realized.

"Our chart (Table 1) illustrates each of these substances, but let me report some notable examples.

"For Benzo[a]pyrene, 222,000 cigarettes would be required to reach the lowest published "danger" threshold.

"For Acetone, 118,000 cigarettes would be required.

"Toluene would require 50,000 packs of simultaneously smoldering cigarettes.

"At the lower end of the scale-- in the case of Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up simultaneously in our little room to reach the threshold at which they might begin to pose a danger.

"For Hydroquinone, "only" 1250 cigarettes are required. Perhaps we could post a notice limiting this 20-foot square room to 300 rather tightly-packed people smoking no more than 62 packs per hour?

"Of course the moment we introduce real world factors to the room -- a door, an open window or two, or a healthy level of mechanical air exchange (remember, the room we've been talking about is sealed) achieving these levels becomes even more implausible.

"It becomes increasingly clear to us that ETS is a political, rather than scientific, scapegoat."

[XD9mm]

yea and we can say the same things about Marijuana smoke, but then if they released the truth everyone would clearly see that most of what we hear are the Government's lies and propaganda, to spread fear and hate among it's citizens, its the same dead argument that guns kill people, guns don't kill people, people kill people, and some use guns to do it. pencils can kill too, but I haven't seen schools out trying to ban them !

[Patty]

Obesity kills too - next we'll be told what and when to eat!

[cavs24]

Yeah I believe everything FAUX news reports.

[Dark Side]

No smoking finally!!!! Get that crap out of our air so we don't have to deal with that smell!!!!

[XD9mm]

I will smoke my cigarettes when I want and where I want, their security force are not Police so therefore their authority means absolutely nothing to me ! what can they do for someone lighting up in the parking lot ? some rules are so stupid they are meant to be broken, and this is one of them !

[cavs24]

I guess all they can really do is call the police and have you thrown off the property unless your an employee, then they can have you fired.

XD9mm wrote:

I will smoke my cigarettes when I want and where I want, their security force are not Police so therefore their authority means absolutely nothing to me ! what can they do for someone lighting up in the parking lot ? some rules are so stupid they are meant to be broken, and this is one of them !

[Confederate1989]

did ya hear the latest polling republicans are favored 46% over democrats in the latest congressional race polling for next year.....The end of the bans is at hand.......the leftwing prohibitionists are on the way out........schip tax relief is comming.........

[cavs24]

Did you see the latest polls out of Texas saying the Democrats are favored over the party of no. My guess is no because that's not reported by Faux news or Limbaugh.

Confederate1989 wrote:

did ya hear the latest polling republicans are favored 46% over democrats in the latest congressional race polling for next year.....The end of the bans is at hand.......the leftwing prohibitionists are on the way out........schip tax relief is comming.........

[XD9mm]

cavs24 wrote:

I guess all they can really do is call the police and have you thrown off the property unless your an employee, then they can have you fired.
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Headlines: A Stuarts Draft man was arrested today for smoking a cigarette while sitting in his vehicle in the parking lot of Augusta Health, charges are pending once police figure out what to do , since are no laws on the books that would be broken...