Business owners on Long Island are delivering hot meals to families stranded by superstorm Sandy in Hoboken, N.J.
Retired people are volunteering to make sandwiches at public shelters throughout the metropolitan New York area.
Volunteers are helping ambulance crews move the sick and injured to nursing homes and hospitals all along the East Coast.
Public employees are working extra hours to ensure public safety, and power crews are crossing state lines under generous mutual aid agreements to help restore power.
What we’re seeing unfold in the aftermath of Sandy has more than a tinge of Ice Storm ’98 deja vu.
We’re seeing neighbors helping neighbors, regardless of age, wealth or gender. We’re seeing people donate hard-earned dollars to help those who have lost their homes and their belongings. And we’re watching as friends and family cling together in despair and gratitude.
We saw it at home in 1998.
We saw it in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
We saw it after the “Super Tuesday” tornado spree in 2008.
We saw it during weeks of fire sweeping across Colorado earlier this year.
And we’re seeing it again as Americans work to recover from Sandy.
These events, as traumatic and distressing as they are, bring people together in a way that make us completely and wonderfully human.
•••
The city of Auburn was the first city in the country to ban smoking in public housing, a trend quickly picked up in Lewiston and then across the state, making Maine a national leader in public health.
This week, Maine took another step in leadership by requiring all future MaineHousing units built and financed by the Low Income Housing Tax Credit to be completely smoke free. We are the first state in the country to take this important step.
It’s a positive step in health protection, but it’s also a tremendous move forward in wise expenditure of public money, since smoke-free housing units are less expensive to maintain. According to Sarah Mayberry, coordinator of the Smoke-Free Housing Coalition of Maine, “landlord changeover expenses for smoke-free apartments are five to ten times less expensive than units that allow smoking.”
And, since the public is the landlord for MaineHousing projects, the public wallet benefits from this new requirement.
Maine has been a leader in using tobacco settlement funds for care and prevention, in banning smoking in public housing, parks and other public places and, now, in tying public housing investment with smoke-free restrictions.
•••
Replace the batteries in your smoke detectors and carbon monoxide alarms. And once the new batteries are in, check to make sure the alarms are working.
This practice of changing alarm batteries when we spring forward into daylight saving time and then fall back in November has been a public service project of the International Fire Chiefs Association for the past quarter-century for good reason.
According to the National Fire Protection Association, almost two-thirds of home fire deaths in this country result from fires in properties without working smoke alarms. Of those deaths — about 3,500 people every year — 80 percent are children.
That’s an alarming statistic that could easily be reduced with a little attention to installing alarms and then ensuring they are powered up and running.
If your home is not equipped with alarms, and you cannot afford to purchase them, contact your local fire department for assistance.
Maine has a lower than average fire death rate. Let’s all do our part to keep it that way.
Sun Journal, Lewiston (Nov.3)
They have created a fear that is based on nothing’’World-renowned pulmonologist, president of the prestigious Research Institute Necker for the last decade, Professor Philippe Even, now retired, tells us that he’s convinced of the absence of harm from passive smoking. A shocking interview.
What do the studies on passive smoking tell us?
PHILIPPE EVEN. There are about a hundred studies on the issue. First surprise: 40% of them claim a total absence of harmful effects of passive smoking on health. The remaining 60% estimate that the cancer risk is multiplied by 0.02 for the most optimistic and by 0.15 for the more pessimistic … compared to a risk multiplied by 10 or 20 for active smoking! It is therefore negligible. Clearly, the harm is either nonexistent, or it is extremely low.
It is an indisputable scientific fact. Anti-tobacco associations report 3 000-6 000 deaths per year in France …
I am curious to know their sources. No study has ever produced such a result.
Many experts argue that passive smoking is also responsible for cardiovascular disease and other asthma attacks. Not you?
They don’t base it on any solid scientific evidence. Take the case of cardiovascular diseases: the four main causes are obesity, high cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes. To determine whether passive smoking is an aggravating factor, there should be a study on people who have none of these four symptoms. But this was never done. Regarding chronic bronchitis, although the role of active smoking is undeniable, that of passive smoking is yet to be proven. For asthma, it is indeed a contributing factor … but not greater than pollen!
The purpose of the ban on smoking in public places, however, was to protect non-smokers. It was thus based on nothing?
Absolutely nothing! The psychosis began with the publication of a report by the IARC, International Agency for Research on Cancer, which depends on the WHO (Editor’s note: World Health Organization). The report released in 2002 says it is now proven that passive smoking carries serious health risks, but without showing the evidence. Where are the data? What was the methodology? It’s everything but a scientific approach. It was creating fear that is not based on anything.
Why would anti-tobacco organizations wave a threat that does not exist?…
The anti-smoking campaigns and higher cigarette prices having failed, they had to find a new way to lower the number of smokers. By waving the threat of passive smoking, they found a tool that really works: social pressure. In good faith, non-smokers felt in danger and started to stand up against smokers. As a result, passive smoking has become a public health problem, paving the way for the Evin Law and the decree banning smoking in public places. The cause may be good, but I do not think it is good to legislate on a lie. And the worst part is that it does not work: since the entry into force of the decree, cigarette sales are rising again.
Why not speak up earlier?
As a civil servant, dean of the largest medical faculty in France, I was held to confidentiality. If I had deviated from official positions, I would have had to pay the consequences. Today, I am a free man.
Le Parisien…
Scientific Evidence Shows Secondhand Smoke Is No Danger
Written By: Jerome Arnett, Jr., M.D.Published In: Environment & Climate NewsPublication Date: July 1, 2008Publisher:
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/23399/Scientific_Evidence_Sho…
myth-of-second-hand-smoke
http://yourdoctorsorders.com/2009/01/the-myth-of-second-hand-smoke
BS Alert: The ‘third-hand smoke’ hoax
http://www.examiner.com/public-policy-in-louisville/bs-alert-the-third-hand-smoke-hoax
The thirdhand smoke scam
http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2010/02/thirdhand-smoke-scam.html
Heart attacks Frauds and Myths..
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7451/
TobaccoControl Tactics
TCTactics aims to provide up-to-date information on the Tobacco Control Industry, its allies and those promoting the extremist anti-tobacco agenda that no longer targets just tobacco but ordinary adult consumers who use it. The website explores how this industry – with support from the pharmaceutical nicotine producers and government tax funds – influences and often distorts public health debates, using a whole raft of lobbying, public relations tactics and junk science.
http://tctactics.org/index.php/Main_Page