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Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington
You are at more risk from the chemicals released into the air from Diesel engines.
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And? It sounds like you're suggesting that because there are more unpleasant chemicals around, then I should be ignoring this one. That's like saying because people get murdered the police shouldn't respond to shoplifting, or because there are entire countries that don't bother with recycling, I shouldn't bother recycling this beer can.
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Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington
My understanding is that nicotine is taken up by receptor cells in the brain rather than being exhaled in water vapour.....but if you know different then OK. I will bow to your greater knowledge.
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It has to get to the brain via the lungs. Your lungs, if working properly, are 20% "efficient" - that is, the air you exhale contains 80% of the oxygen that was present when you breathed it in. That's because the bulk of the air just sits in the middle of tiny bubbles called alveoli. Only the air that's in contact with the alveolus surface actually gives up its oxygen.
With both types of cig, the nicotine has to get into your bloodstream the same way. In regular cigarettes, the carrier is the smoke particles. In ecigs, the carrier is water droplets (not vapour, even though that's what everyone calls it). The stuff you can see when they breathe out - smoke or water - still contains as much of the nicotine as when it went in (and tar, in the case of regular cigs). The particles that gave up their nicotine remain in your lungs until carried out by mucous (cigarettes) or exhaled as water vapour (true water vapour this time - the kind you can't see unless it condenses into water droplets on a cold day).
This is all knowledge deduced based on a A levels in biology and physics, i.e. common sense. I've done about as much research into it as the government has...
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Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington
If smokers are trying to quit and use these devices to help them, then they should be 'cut some slack' in order to help them ditch the tobacco habit.
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Agreed, but just to be devil's advocate here - do you think that giving everyone in a room a little bit of heroin would help the recovering drug addict? What you're suggesting is that in the doctor's waiting room (or wherever) the non-smokers present are obliged to breathe in the nicotine in the air just to make the smoker a little more comfortable about the habit they are trying to kick.
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Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington
Most of the damaging agents in tobacco are the tar compounds.
Second hand smoke(especially in confined spaces) is damaging to those breathing it in.
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Absolutelyright. It's just the addictive drug that's present in exhaled ecig smoke - not of those nasty carcinogens (or at least, none that we know about yet).
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Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington
As for your colleague who goes on smoke breaks........this is something that can be tackled at appraisal.
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Wait - weren't you just talking about social pariahs?
I have no problem with people who need a smoke break, I'm just saying it costs you money. Yes, you.
The organisation, whether it's the council or the widget factory needs to absorb the cost of the smoker, just like it absorbs the cost of the tea junkie (me
) or the horny workers who nip off to the stationery cupboard for a quickie (not me
). Ultimately all these costs are met by the consumer, whether it's in your council tax or the cost price of your brand new widget.
Even if you limit or don't allow smoke breaks, you're talking about an addictive substance. The reduced capacity from someone who's been disallowed a smoke break that they feel they need is probably just as damaging to their productivity as letting them take the break in the first place.
There's no solution for this, unless the company actively discriminates against smokers during its recruitment - and I'm not sure anyone other than Accyexplorer is teflon-coated enough to start that discussion...