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Toxicity: 30–60 mg (0.5–1.0 mg/kg) can be a lethal dosage for adult humans. As a rough estimate, a horse can be 400kg, so a lethal does of 200mg-400mg for a horse. Density from wikipedia 1.01 g/cm³. This means a lethal dose would take up 0.25-0.5 cm³ which is a drop of diameter 0.8-1 cm. This is quite a large drop, approximately 5-10times the dose you ...

When there is doubt about individual studies, the place to go is a meta-study - one that looks at many different experiments, evaluates the quality according to a strict methodology, and pools the results to get stronger statistical findings. Here's one from 2007: Meta-analysis of studies of passive smoking and lung cancer: effects of study type and ...

The Surgeon General of the United states issued a report in 2006 about second-hand smoke. The six major conclusions were: Many millions of Americans, both children and adults, are still exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes and workplaces despite substantial progress in tobacco control. Secondhand smoke exposure causes disease and ...

Yes Most of the information on this subject appears to come from the work of Pourmand G, Alidaee MR, Rasuli S, Maleki A, Mehrsai A. at the Urology Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran The severity of ED correlated significantly with the level of exposure to smoking Source: Do cigarette smokers with erectile dysfunction ...

It takes more than a drop of nicotine, swallowed, to kill a horse. Robin Sanecki, Ramesh C. Gupta, Wade L. Kadel, Lethal nicotine intoxication in a group of mules, J Vet Diagn Invest 6:503-504 (1994) This paper is about a number of mules that died from eating nicotine-contaminated feed. It claims, without a clear source, that: The reported minimal ...

In 2011, Cancer Council Australia and Quit Victoria issued a position statement, in which they summarise the evidence of the effect of plain packaging. They draw a number of conclusions, but the relevant ones include: "Current pack colours and imagery can dilute the impact of graphic health warnings." "Unregulated package colouring and imagery contribute ...

I'm not a pro-smoking crusader. (Can't stand the things) But in the interest of balance, there has been at least one study which somewhat contradicts the commonly accepted theme on second hand smoke. http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/90/19/1440.full.pdf is a largish WHO study that described an apparently (and surprising) protective effect of second ...

This has to be one of the most pathetic attempts to earn money I can imagine - ignoring all of the evidence and actually recommending smoking? That is bat!@#$ crazy. Comparing the Risks Let's look at the mortality rates. (I've limited myself to just the evidence in the UK, because that is where this <expletive> lives.) 70-75 thousand people in the UK ...

In 2009, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did a chemical analysis of several products from two leading brands of electronic cigarette. What they found was disturbing. Here are some excerpted points: DPA's analysis of the electronic cigarette samples showed that the product contained detectable levels of known carcinogens and toxic chemicals ...

There is good evidence that smoking bans reduce the number of heart attacks. In the meta-analysis "Cardiovascular effect of bans on smoking in public places: a systematic review and meta-analysis" published in 2009 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology the authors state in their conclusion Using 11 reports from 10 study locations, AMI risk ...

Yes, the number is derived from a study published in Nature: If the majority of mutations derive from the mélange of mutagens present in tobacco smoke, the clone of cells that ultimately becomes cancerous would acquire, over its lifetime, an average of one mutation for every 15 cigarettes smoked. If this is the case in a localised cluster of cells, then ...

In 2010 the Wellcome Trust published One mutation per 15 cigarettes: genome maps reveal how cancer develops "These are the two main cancers in the developed world for which we know the primary exposure," said Professor Mike Stratton, from the Cancer Genome Project at the Sanger Institute. "For lung cancer, it is cigarette smoke and for malignant melanoma ...

Nicotine is a toxin, which is why plants produce it for self-protection. This is not usually an issue for smokers or those on NRT used as specified because of the dosage levels, but can be for tobacco workers and those using it as an insecticide. As nicotine is a physical stimulant (though it can also act as a relaxant), NRT is often seen as unsuitable for ...

Yes, tobacco companies add additives to cigarettes, and those additives have an effect. References: Pharmacological and Chemical Effects of Cigarette Additives, Michael Rabinoff, Nicholas Caskey, Anthony Rissling, and Candice Park American Journal of Public Health, November 2007, Vol 97, No. 11 DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2005.078014 We investigated tobacco ...

There are several different forms of dose-effect curve possible. A toxin following the "threshold model" has no adverse effect up to a particular threshold, and increasingly strong adverse effects past that threshold. "Hormesis" is a model under which small doses have a beneficial effect, but increasing dosage beyond a particular point has adverse effects ...

In addition to the meta-analyses Oddthinking reported on, there’s also the US Surgeon General’s report from 2006: … the debate is over. The science is clear: secondhand smoke is … a serious health hazard that causes premature death and disease in children and nonsmoking adults. […] Since [the 1986 Surgeon General’s Report] was published, ...

I still prefer my more humorous answer, but with the idea that it is better to keep it simple, I have added this answer as well. We will see which one people prefer. The Surgeon Generals key claim revolves around the fact that 69 chemicals in second-hand smoke are carcinogens, so there is no risk free exposure level. From the EPA's Toxicology Assesment: ...

To disprove this theory, would you need to find one person who had never smoked more than 3 cigarettes a day, but who is addicted? To prove this theory, would you need to find several people who frequently smoke up to 3 cigarettes a day, but who are not addicted? Speaking for myself, I'm an ex-addict: I've quit several times, and I've discovered ...

Despite the consensus, there are good quality studies that don't find a strong link I think the scientific consensus is clear: almost everyone thinks secondhand smoke is bad. But skeptics should carefully consider, especially in areas where emotions run as high as this, the alternative views. Here is a large scale study of the long term effects of ...

No. You would need to find a mechanism, such as arguing that a smoker breathes in filtered smoke which the person next to them breathes in unfiltered smoke. Since almost all smokers do not have a cigarette in their mouths all the time, this is highly dubious. The evidence from second-hand smoke studies is that the risk to the non-smoker is small but ...

The 600,000 figure seems to have come from "Worldwide burden of disease from exposure to second-hand smoke: a retrospective analysis of data from 192 countries" by Mattias Öberg and others published in The Lancet, Volume 377, Issue 9760, Pages 139 - 146, 8 January 2011 and online 26 November 2010, which said "603 000 deaths were attributable to second-hand ...

The related question has already established the overall dangers of secondhand smoking. I'll focus on the claim that it's likely or possible that secondhand smoke can cause more damage to the inhaler than the smoker. The British Lung Foundation claims that it is more dangerous to the inhaler in this manner Passive smokers inhale smoke breathed in and ...

As a skeptic, any claim which is accompanied by the phrase, "the science is settled," or "science has proven," should set off alarm bells. You will also notice a peculiar high usage of the word "can" in explaining the possible consequences of brief secondhand smoke exposure. The truth of the matter is: Every "safe" chemical has some level at which it is ...

This article basically says that you need to be careful when you quit smoking not to allow yourself to gain weight. However there is nothing that says that you can lose weight by smoking. In fact: University of Kansas researchers found in a 2006 study that heavy smokers tend to exercise less, eat in front of the television more often and frequent ...

Yes there is an effect but it may not be as large as early studies suggested with a result of reducing heart attacks by 3-4% in some population subgroups The trouble with science in areas where there is a broad consensus is that many people don't check their results carefully when they agree with the consensus view. And when those results can be used as ...

According to the literature, cigarette mainstream smoke (MS) essentially increases the risk of two major groups of life threatening diseases: Cancer and Cardiovascular diseases. The assessment that Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) exposure should cause similar effects is a logic deduction, albeit theoric but epidemiologic data is controversial, at best. ...

There is some research here and here that shows generic packaging makes smoking less attractive to youth and those who are not yet addicted as it greatly cuts down the "cool factor". Several countries have considered having such a ban in place but as none have enacted them yet there's no long-term research. Effects will likely be: A decrease in youth ...