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By Stuart Hutson ■ ■
The Battalion ™
Dennis Miller recently
joked that smoking has become so socially
unacceptable that it has even been banned in
the cafeteria of the Philip Morris production
plant. Everywhere, smokers are being driven
from the mass populace to areas designated
for those who wish to participate in this can
cer-inducing activity.
College Station may be the next to jump
on the smoke-free bandwagon. A proposal
from the Board of Health for Bryan-College
Station to eliminate smoking in restaurants
between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. will
be debated by the Bryan and College Station
city councils today.
Regardless of the subject matter dis
cussed by the representatives of the twin
cities, medical specialists at Texas A&M said
the discussion comes down to the cities’ will
ingness to take a risk.
“As a society, we have to ask just how
much of a risk we are willing to tolerate,” said
Gregg Wells, an assistant professor in the De
partment of Pathology and Laboratory Med
icine at A&M. “If we decided to get rid of all
the 18-wheelers on the roads, the roads would
be a safer place. But society accepts the risk.
There are vehicles we do not allow, but draw
ing that line is usually a difficult choice.
“There is a substantial body which shows
that there are almost definitely risks associated
with smoking and second-hand smoke, but
evaluating those risks is a difficult task,” he said
The problem with evaluation
Wells said the main difficulty of examin
ing the risks of second-hand smoke lies with
determining the level of exposure a person
has had to the smoke.
“It is easy to set up a laboratory condition in
which you expose a rat with a quantified
amount of smoke and then observe the direct
result,” he said. “But in real-life settings, there
are a lot of other factors that come into play that
^ A make determining what level of ex-
V'Cf\ posure has been reached difficult ”
The most common form of
evaluating exposure is by questionnaire,
but Wells said this form of testing often
falls flat because of human inaccuracies
and false answers.
Another way is testing levels of nico
tine and other cigarette chemicals in the
blood of those exposed. However, this is
often difficult because even the longest-
lasting chemicals remain for only 40
hours, and diminish in amount over that
time. Wells said.
The difficulty of determining the lev
el of exposure is compounded when re
searchers take into account that similar
exposures may affect different people
in drastically different ways. /
“Well, say that a certain person is f
exposed to so much smoke and then j
develops lung cancer.... The smoke /
probably played a part, but there are
many other factors that also con
tributed to that cancer,” he said.
Inal 995 air quality test, the Oc- JH
cupational Safety and Health Ad
ministration (OSHA) measured the
average concentration of airborne
nicotine in several environments in
which smoking was permitted. i
It found two to six micrograms f
per cubic meter (ug/m3) of nicotine in
office buildings, three to eight ug/m3
in restaurants, one to six ug/m3 in
blue-collar workplaces and one to
three ug/m3 in homes of smokers.
This means, on average, ciga
rette smoke was most dense in
restaurants, which have more than
twice the average concentration of
smokers’ homes.
“We know that there is defi
nitely an increased risk, and stud
ies are continuing to more pre
cisely define that risk,” Wells
said. “But different studies have
M n
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LLt : f‘ f
different interpretations \M is III
and different results.... ^
Some have found a 10
to 30 percent increase in risk to develop cer
tain problems associated with smoking while
other experiments have found a 70 to 100
percent increase.”
The stakes
| The American Medical Association
(AMA) has found that exposure to second
hand smoke may contribute not only to lung
cancer, but also to heart disease, lower-res-
piratory-track infections, middle-ear infec
tions and nasal sinus damage and may in
crease the chance of sudden infant death
syndrome and chronic asthma.
“When many people consider the effects
of second-hand smoke, they think of lung
cancer, but something that is probably
B affect on the car-
1,” said Cynthia
diovascular re-
Department of
logy.
said chemicals
; smoke damage
sis surrounding
and can con-
ite to the buildup
Df plaque in the
vessels, which
can lead to a
heart attack.
“Of course,
tage is just like
1 that you would
ou had a high-fat
• a lack of exer-
she said,
e severity of
^e depends upon
nount and dura-
smoke exposure
>n encounters,
icre is a lot of
ght now about
IJ I how long it lakes to
JJl gel L;n L to normal af-
: k one quits
smoking, and there ai\ a • > of opinions on
the subject, she syJ ‘Lr I think that
most 'heart:] si geoiv :M tell you that
there is always •n :e that never
goes a vac. ;t!« ;• . .>n . exposed,
the more of this damage »s done.”
Although customers at a restaurant may
breathe second hand smoke for a short
amount of time. Wells said, those most af
fected are the waiters and waitresses.
“It is just like with the (light attendants
who are constantly exposed to recycled air,”
he said. “These waiters and waitresses are
constantly being exposed to air with more
smoke in it than the home of the smoker (us
ing the information from the OSHA study).”
Why smoke?
With all the warnings and potential dangers
of smoking, one (nonsmoker) may ask why
smokers continue to request to sit in sections
where they are allowed to light up after a meal.
“Smoking is the frost difficult addiction
to quit because it is so integrated into the dai
ly routine of the smoker... both psychologi
cally and biologically," said Antonio Cepe-
da-Benito. an associate professor of
psychology at A&M.
He said smokers usually smoke enough
to keep a constant amount of the addictive,
drug nicotine in their system. However, the
times they smoke are determined by certain
triggering actions, such as having a large
meal or a cup of coffee.
Cepeda-Benito said that if nicotine is not
maintained constantly, the smoker will
strongly crave the drug.
“If certain cues predict smoking, then
the body will expect to base the nicotine,
and people won t be happ; M they can’t
have it, he said di is likely that jif the
proposal is passed] peop.c will decide to
stay home and order pizza if they can’t
smoke when eat inn out.”
1 •
' Jrt' jjk)
ifluence
lended
Engineering Career Fair
STUDENT ENGINEERS’ COUNCIL
Hosted by SEC and the Department
of Cooperative Education
(Formerly known as the CEO Career Fair)
Today (10 am - 6pm)
2nd Floor MSC
Bus rides to MSC from Zachrv and back!!
3M
ABB Inc.
Acterna
Adams Consulting Engineers, Inc.
Alcatel
Alcoa
AMD - Advanced Micro Devices
Andersen Consulting
Applied Materials
Applied Research Laboratories/UT Austin
Arthur Andersen LLP
Austin Energy
Avanade
Bibb Associates Inc.
Black & Veatch
The Boeing Company
Bury + Partners
Cadence Design Systems
CFX, Inc.
Chicago Bridge & Iron Company
CIA
Cirrus Logic
Cisco Systems Inc.
City of Fort Worth
City of San Antonio Public Works Dept.
Compaq Computer Corporation
Conexant Systems, Inc.
Dallas Semiconductor
DELL
e2i, Inc.
List of companies hiring for jobs, interns, and co-ops:
Scient Corporation
Seagate
Eastman Chemical Company
El Paso Energy Corporation
Electro Scientific Industries, Inc.
EMCON/OWT
Enron
Equiva Services
Ericsson
Ethicon, Inc. (A Johnson and Johnson Company)
EXE Technologies
Fisher-Rosemount Systems
Fluor Corporation
Freese and Nichols, Inc.
Frito-Lay
Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc.
General Cable
Grainger
Granite Construction
Flalff Associates, Inc.
Halliburton Company
Harris Corporation
Hewlett-Packard
IBM
IMC GLOBAL OPERATIONS, INC.
Informatica Corp.
Intel Corporation
InterVoice-Brite
KLA-Tencor Corp.
KPMG LLP
Kurt Salmon Associates
Lockheed Martin
Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam, Inc.
Lone Star Steel Company
LSI Logic
Lynntech, Inc.
Lyondell / Equistar
Marlow Industries, Inc.
McLeodUSA
Micro Systems Engineering, Inc.
Micron Technology, Inc.
Microsoft
Montgomery Watson
Motive
Motorola
Mustang Engineering
NASA Johnson Space Center
NATCO GROUP
National Instruments
NetIO
Nokia Mobile Phones
Nortel Networks
North Star Steel
Occidental Petroleum Corp./Oil & Gas Co.
Pervasive Software
PriceWaterhouseCoopers
Raytheon
Reptron Electronics, Inc.
Saint-Gobain Vetrotex America, Inc.
Sanmina
SBC Communications Inc.
SCHLUMBERGER
Siemens Building Technologies
SOUTHDOWN "
Southwest Research Institute
STMicroelectronics
TAMU Co-op Education
Temple Inland Forest Products Corporation
Ten X Technology, Inc.
Teradyne, Inc.
TestChip Technologies
Texas Department of Transportation
Texas Instruments Incorporated
The Software Group, Inc.
Titan-Lincom Corporation
Tivoli Systems
Turner Collie & Braden, Inc.
TXI Chaparral Steel
TXU
Tyco Flow Control
United Space Alliance * .C
United States Navy Ei^ifie^ri^FrcQrams
UBG CORPORATION
Vignette Corporation
VMS, Inc.
Williams
Zachry Construction Corporation