Word: tobacco
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There are also plenty of hazardous vapors. Says Chemist Gray Robertson, whose company in Fairfax, Va., has surveyed nearly 250 structures for foul indoor air: "The public tends to mistake tobacco smoke -- the only visible indoor contaminant -- for all pollution." Less readily detected are irritating fumes from copier-machine liquids, carbonless paper, paint, rugs, draperies, wall paneling and cleaning solvents. Many contain formaldehyde, which can cause nausea, rashes and menstrual irregularities. Ventilators also spew forth illness-causing bacteria and mold; such organisms find fertile breeding ground in air-conditioning and heating systems that are often turned off at night...
...clear challenge to all who care about the health of smokers," says Ovide Pomerleau, professor of behavioral medicine at the University of Michigan. "This socially approved habit is going to go the way of the spittoon." Among Koop's recommendations: warning labels about addiction on packages of tobacco products, a ban on cigarette vending machines in order to curb availability to children and tighter regulation of tobacco sales through licensing. Democratic Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey has already introduced legislation in Congress that would require tobacco companies to print an additional caveat on their products: "Smoking is addictive. Once...
...tobacco industry, as expected, blasted the Surgeon General's report. "The claims that smokers are 'addicts' defy common sense and contradict the fact that people quit smoking every day," said Brennan Moran, a spokeswoman for the Tobacco Institute. "The Surgeon General has mistaken the enemy," declared Democratic Senator Terry Sanford of North Carolina. "In comparing tobacco -- a legitimate and legal substance -- to insidious narcotics such as heroin and cocaine, he has directed 'friendly fire' at American farmers and businessmen...
...panic of a heavy smoker bereft of cigarettes speaks alarmingly of a physiological force at work that is more powerful than mere desire. Not long after taking up the habit, smokers become tolerant of nicotine's effects; as with heroin and cocaine, dependence quickly follows. Tobacco only seems safer because it is not immediately dangerous. Nicotine is not likely, for example, to fatally overstimulate a healthy heart, cause disorienting hallucinations or pack anywhere near the same euphoric punch as many other drugs. "People die with crack immediately," explains Alexander Glassman, a psychopharmacologist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute...
Despite all this, smoking can be conquered. Although ex-heroin users have reported that tobacco's grip was harder to break than their illicit drug habit, 43 million Americans have managed to quit smoking, mostly succeeding on their own. Increasingly, though, the one-third of all Americans who still smoke are seeking help in antismoking programs, which generally stress that the tobacco habit is a treatable addiction. The best stop-smoking programs, says Thomas Kottke, a senior consultant at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., combine several approaches with plenty of long-term support for the struggling nonsmoker...