Posted by Owen Roberts on May 29, 2007 at 14:45:55 from 80.189.142.245 user OwenRoberts.
In Reply to: Re: Next- Smoking! posted by Peter H on May 29, 2007 at 12:32:13:
Thanks for your thoughts on this PeterH. It is always a painful lesson when a parent dies unnecessarily.
However my own father, who died in his late eighties, smoked his pipe to the day he died. I will be lucky to live that long.
My father espoused Ogden Nash's saying "It is better to smoke here than hereafter".
Medical evidence is patchy, as governments ignore evidence on the damage that traffic fumes cause, because they don't want to lose the revenue and also they don't want people to live too long because of the heavy pension and health costs.
However there is evidence that traffic fumes (especially unleaded petrol and diesel) do cause increases in asthma and other respiratory diseases.
This ignores the benzene that unleaded petrol produces which is a carcinogen. Please don't ever go near the exhaust of an unleaded petrol car until it has run about 3/4 miles and the catalytic converter has warmed up.
The real problem is that we have suffered from the adverse effects of tobacco for many years, but it is only from comparatively recently that we have had to suffer in effects of unleaded petrol and diesel.
In Rattletrap days, engines ran on motor spirit which burned comparatively cleanly in a low compression engine.
So we must wait to find out which is the more effective means of killing us.