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Professor Sir Richard Doll, the first scientist to publish research that suggested a correlation between lung cancer and primary smoking, commented: "The effects of other people smoking in my presence is so small it doesn't worry me."
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In 1992, for example, the American Environmental Protection Agency published a report that was said to demonstrate the link between passive smoking and ill health in non-smokers. In 1996 however a US federal court ruled that the EPA had completely failed to prove its case. It was found not only to have abandoned recognised statistical practice, but to have excluded studies which did not support its pre-determined conclusion
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in 1997, the National Health & Medical Research Council in Australia was found guilty by a federal court judge of acting improperly in preparing its draft report on passive smoking because it didn't consider all the relevant scientific evidence and submissions
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in March 1998 the World Health Organisation was forced to admit that the results of a seven-year study (the largest of its kind) into the link between passive smoking and lung cancer were not 'statistically significant'. This is because the risk of a non-smoker getting lung cancer has been estimated at 0.01%. According to WHO, non-smokers are subjecting themselves to an increased risk of 16-17% if they consistently breathe other people's tobacco smoke. This may sound alarming, but an increase of 16-17% on 0.01 is so small that, in most people's eyes, it is no risk at all.
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the Economist (15 March 1998), pointed out that, 'It is dangerous to become involved in campaigns that are not solidly based on scientific evidence' and added: 'Although passive smoking is unpleasant and irritating for non-smokers, that alone cannot justify banning it in public places.'
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in July 1999, in its draft Approved Code of Practice on Smoking at Work, the United Kingdom's Health and Safety Commission declared that, 'Proving beyond reasonable doubt that passive smoking ... was a risk to health is likely to be very difficult, given the state of the scientific evidence.'
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In April 2002, following an exhaustive six-month investigation during which written and oral evidence was supplied by organisations including ASH, Cancer Research UK and FOREST, the Greater London Assembly Investigative Committee on Smoking in Public Places declined to recommend ANY further restrictions on smoking in public places, stating very clearly that it is not easy to prove a link between passive smoking and lung cancer.
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In 2003 the British Medical Journal, no friend of tobacco, published an explosive, peer-reviews study that seriously questioned the impact of environmental tobacco smoke on health (16 May 2003)........ The analysis, by James Enstrom of the University of California, Los Angeles and Geoffrey Kabat of New Rochelle, New York, involved 118,094 California adults enrolled in the American Cancer Society cancer prevention study in 1959, who were followed until 1998. Particular focus was on the 35,561 never smokers who had a spouse in the study with known smoking habits........The authors found that exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, as estimated by smoking in spouses, was not significantly associated with death from coronary heart disease or lung cancer at any time or at any level of exposure.
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