Smoking Bans Cut Heart Attacks By Up To A Quarter

Posted by Queuebot in Science & Tech on September 26, 2009 at 7:09 am


Many communities have enacted smoking bans in public places, some of which have been in effect for several years. How is that affecting our overall health? According to an analysis of studies, the bans are significantly cutting the rate of heart attacks in those communities.

“By lumping 11 studies together, we have increased the certainty that smoking bans really do reduce the risk of heart attack,” lead author Dr David G Meyers (University of Kansas School of Public Medicine, Kansas City) told heartwire. Meyers and colleagues report their findings online September 21, 2009 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Meyers says there are some additional messages from this review. Although they found, on average, a 17% reduction in AMI, this figure is “deceptive,” he says, because they also showed—in longer-term studies—a 26% decrease in heart attacks per year that the ban had existed. So this proves “the longer a community bans smoking, the greater the effect.” It also appears the people who seem to derive the greatest benefit from the bans are younger and often predominantly female—likely those working in the hospitality and entertainment industry, he says.

Link

(image credit: Flickr user bennylin0724)

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Nightcrawlerx.


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COMMENT

17 comments to "Smoking Bans Cut Heart Attacks By Up To A Quarter"

  1. FishBottleT
    September 26th, 2009 at 7:27 am

    This is good news. I am not a smoker myself but have friends that are. I am happy to hear that they are confirming that facts that second hand smoke is a health risk.

  2. dutchboy
    September 26th, 2009 at 10:26 am

    But I thought the world was overpopulated anyhow, wouldnt it be better for mother earth to stop the jihad against smoking.

  3. Lady Helena Handbasket
    September 26th, 2009 at 11:02 am

    Brilliant idea, dutchboy. We could also scrap speed limits on roads, ban airbags, ban motorbike helmets, cut mandatory murder sentences, dissolve the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Authority and the Center for Disease Control, scrap safety checks on airplanes and issue guns to all 10-year-olds. Think of the savings. We could solve the global recession and the overpopulation problem at a stroke. I just wonder why nobody thought of it before.

  4. generalsn
    September 26th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    No one ever knew how healthy it is to smoke outdoors.

  5. Jon Doe
    September 26th, 2009 at 1:20 pm

    Idiots.

  6. caveman
    September 26th, 2009 at 4:52 pm

    So they chose those studies that corroborated their point and discarded the ones that didn't?

  7. luvpumpkns
    September 26th, 2009 at 8:04 pm

    despite the accutacies of these studies, i doubt it will change the minds of people(including myself) that feel that the owners of private establishments should be able to choose whether or not they want to go non-smoking.

  8. V
    September 26th, 2009 at 10:24 pm

    They also cut freedom 100%

  9. Ant Dude
    September 26th, 2009 at 10:29 pm

    "You must be a member to access this content."

  10. GailW
    September 26th, 2009 at 10:51 pm

    Hurray for Smoking Bans!

  11. TIMM
    September 27th, 2009 at 6:38 am

    Caveman has it right.

    The number of factors involved and the evidence to support such a claim is almost impossible to track. Not to mention that a study of this magnitude would take several decades before a conclusion could be drawn.

    Research studies are bought and paid for by people/organizations with something to gain. Scientific researchers are whores.

  12. hslch
    September 27th, 2009 at 4:23 pm

    Is this really what passes for scientific inference these days? This can quite readily be attributed to a joint effect yet that does not seem to be well vetted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause

  13. c0ldfish
    September 27th, 2009 at 9:14 pm

    i go to the university of kansas, smoke, and support smoking bans

  14. John A
    September 28th, 2009 at 2:13 am

    Yes, the data was, well, manipulated. Or would have been if the reported study actually existed...

    http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7451/
    "Although The Sunday Times claimed a 10 per cent drop in heart attacks, nowhere in the 500 word article was a source mentioned and no one was quoted giving this figure. The ‘study’ the newspaper referred to does not exist, and the anti-smoking pressure group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) – not renowned for downplaying the risks of passive smoking – went to the unusual lengths of posting a notice on its website the following day to point out that ‘the figures reported in The Sunday Times yesterday (and now circulating elsewhere) are not based on any research conducted to date’"

    Several other studies showing supposed benefits are listed - and debunked - in the article in Spiked.

    There may have been an effect, but not to the extent this supposed "study" purported to find. More likely so small as to be "statistically insignificant."

  15. seefish3
    September 28th, 2009 at 4:05 am

    “By lumping 11 studies together..."

    That's reassuringly professional!

  16. Lady Helena Handbasket
    September 28th, 2009 at 4:16 am

    It's called a meta-analysis seefish3, it's how good science is done. Whether this one is good science or not I don't know, but yours is not a valid criticism.

  17. Dr. Lao
    September 28th, 2009 at 5:26 pm

    More of Big Government telling you what to do. Our freedoms are being taken away bit-by-bit. These same anti-tobacco lunatics are the same idiots who go running on a 95 degree day during a 3rd stage smog alert beside the highway. And let's not mention all the toxins we breath every day in our own homes.

    Oh, and I'm a non-smoker. Why isn't anyone beating up on the fat and obese?


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