The Moose: You'll have to speak up. Smoking causes WHAT now?

Hearing loss linked to passive smoking

Smoking link to hearing loss risk
People who are exposed to the second-hand smoke from others' cigarettes are at increased risk of hearing loss, experts believe.

Is it me or is there an all out panic amongst those who's lively hoods depend on berating smokers? We seem be be having some very deep barrels being scraped in order to get the latest scare story on passive smoking.

Only yesterday we had smoking while pregnant turns your child into a career criminal. Now passive smoking causes hearing loss. I said hearing loss.

Doctors already know that people who smoke can damage their hearing.

Really? Because I've not heard that one before. I would imagine that if smokers have poor hearing, it's nothing to do with tobacco, rather it's the constant ear-bashing, nagging that they get from all and sundry.

The latest study in the journal Tobacco Control, involving more than 3,000 US adults, suggests the same is true of passive smoking.
Experts believe tobacco smoke may disrupt blood flow in the small vessels of the ear.
This could starve the organ of oxygen and lead to a build up of toxic waste, causing damage.

I've highlighted the typical words used in these studies. They're all the same aren't they. Take a group of people so small as to be completely insignificant. Get no scientific results. Publish a paper that says you could be correct. Sit back while the BBC bleats it ad nauseum.

To assess passive smoke exposure, the volunteers had their blood checked for a byproduct of nicotine, called cotinine, which is made when the body comes into contact with tobacco smoke.

and tea, potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants...

This revealed that people exposed to second-hand smoke were far more likely to have poorer hearing than others, and to a degree where they might struggle to follow a conversation in the presence of background noise.

How? How did a blood test for cotinine reveal hearing loss? They are telling us what they want us to hear but providing no proof what so ever.

Passive smoking increased their risk of hearing loss across all sound frequencies by about a third.

*sigh*

Dr David Fabry, who led the research, said: "We really do not know exactly how much smoke you need to be exposed to in order to be at increased risk. But we do know that the threshold for damage is very low.

They have been unable to show any results so come out with the usual, "no safe level", mantra. There are even safe levels for radiation FFS!.