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Past Month Alone, Serious NYC E-Cig Explosions Have Dealt Serious Injuries To People—3rd Degree Burns & Permanent Disfigurement; People From Brooklyn,Queens, LI Have Also Been Victims Of Ticking-Time-Bomb E-Cigs; Critical Focus By Feds & Possible Recalls Must Be Weighed With E-Cig Sites Pushing Holiday Gift Buys, Schumer Concerned Explosions Will Continue To Rise; FDA Recorded Dozens Of Serious Explosions In 2015 & 2016; 2017 Could See Even More   Schumer: Feds Must Consider Recalls For Exploding E-Cigs; Enough Is Enough   U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today called on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take a hard look...

TUESDAY, Oct. 17 (HealthDay News) -- A new study finds that at least 1 in every 4 smokers will develop progressive and incurable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a much higher risk than previously believed. COPD is a respiratory disease that results in blocked air flow to the lungs and grows progressively worse. For this study, published online in the journal Thorax, researchers at Hvidovre Hospital analyzed data on 8,000 men and women, ages 30 to 60. All were monitored for 25 years as part of the Copenhagen City Heart Study. At the start of the study, all the participants'...

New research from investigators at Harvard University measured secondhand tobacco smoke in cars and found pollution levels that are likely hazardous to children. "The levels were above the threshold for what's considered unhealthy for sensitive groups -- people like children and the elderly -- as determined by the Environmental Protection Agency," said lead study author Vaughan Rees, Ph.D., a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health. During 45 driving trials, the researchers strapped a pollution monitor into a child-safety seat, and then asked a smoker-volunteer to light up at different times along the near hour-long route. The road...

ELON, N.C. - Almost 65 percent of North Carolina residents would support a statewide ban on smoking in public places, and more than half prefer restaurants that don't allow smoking, according to a survey released Tuesday by Elon University. The survey also found that 65 percent of residents support allowing city and town governments to pass local smoking bans, which is barred under state law. "It appears that the historical ties to tobacco in this state are now essentially severed as anti-smoking sentiments prevail among North Carolinians," said Hunter Bacot, who directed the poll. The survey of 649 people was...

GRAND RAPIDS -- Spectrum Health and Saint Mary's Health Care will require all their employees to not use tobacco at any time during their work shift beginning January 1. The staffs of both hospitals will need to arrive without smelling of smoke, and they can't use any tobacco products until they leave hospital property after their shift. Metro Health is also joining in the Smoke-Free Work Day Every Day campaign. In 2003, the Grand Rapids hospitals became the first in the country to jointly declare their hospital campuses smoke-free. Today, more than 30 Michigan hospitals have smoke-free campuses. This...

A major Canadian-led global study has found all forms of tobacco exposure, whether that be smoking, chewing or inhaling second hand smoke, increase the risk of heart attack. The study by professors Salim Yusuf and Koon Teo of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences in Hamilton, is published in this week's issue of The Lancet. In collaboration with colleagues from 52 countries, they calculated the risk of heart attack for various forms of active tobacco use (both smoking and non-smoking) and second hand smoking in all areas of the world. The INTERHEART...

UC Davis researchers today described in unprecedented biochemical and anatomical detail how cigarette smoke damages the lungs of unborn and newborn children. The findings illustrate with increased urgency the dangers that smokers' families and friends face, said UC Davis Professor Kent Pinkerton, and should give family doctors helpful new insight into the precise hidden physical changes occurring in their young patients' lungs. "Smoke exposure causes significant damage and lasting consequences in newborns," Pinkerton said. "This research has a message for every parent: Do not smoke or breathe secondhand smoke while you are pregnant. Do not let your children breathe secondhand...

As any parent knows, crawling babies explore the world by touching - and tasting - anything they can get their wet little hands on. If their parents use tobacco, that curiosity may expose babies to what some doctors are calling "thirdhand" smoke - particles and gases given off by cigarettes that cling to walls, clothes and even hair and skin. Up to 90% of the nicotine in cigarette smoke sticks to nearby surfaces, says Georg Matt, a professor at San Diego State University. Preliminary research by Matt and others suggests the same chemicals that leave a stale cigarette odor on...

Excerpt - LITTLE ROCK - Gov. Mike Huckabee, who successfully pushed for a statewide workplace smoking ban earlier this year, predicted Wednesday that cigarettes eventually won't be sold because of their health risks. "I think the day will come when we probably won't" sell cigarettes, Huckabee said on his monthly call-in radio show. "If cigarettes were introduced to the marketplace today, they wouldn't be sold. They'd never make it because what we didn't know when they were first created, sold and marketed is just how deadly harmful they were." Huckabee was responding to a caller's question of why cigarettes are...

The issue is no longer just about smoking. Passing a state law outlawing smoking in most public places was, by this comparison, the easiest thing to do. The law was not required to address the inevitable hardships such a bill was destined to inflict. There was clapping and backslapping on the floor of the state Senate the afternoon it passed there. But none of that really matters now, when the issue is one of how it impacts people's lives. They are men and women who once ran tiny, yet prosperous, packed-to- the-kegs establishments, who now tend mostly empty bars. The...

MADISON, WI (AP) -- Doctors are testing a radical new way to help smokers quit: a shot that "immunizes" them against the nicotine rush that fuels their addiction. That pleasurable buzz has seduced Mario Musachia into burning through nearly half a million cigarettes in half a century. Now the Madison man is among 300 people around the country who are testing an experimental vaccine that makes the immune system attack nicotine in much the same way it would fight a life-threatening germ. The treatment keeps nicotine from reaching the brain, making smoking less pleasurable and theoretically, easier to give up....

Officials ask witnesses to the nearly 35,000-acre Canyon fire to call them Someone's smoking habit started the immense fire that burned for more than a week west of Patterson and needed 2,000 firefighters from around the state to control, state fire investigators said. Investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said this week that forensic evidence from where the Canyon fire started near Del Puerto Canyon Road on July 9 could tell them who started the fire. They have determined that a number of people were present when the fire started, and investigators would like these witnesses...

Poor Heather Crowe, the Ottawa waitress who recently died of lung cancer and had lent her persona to the anti-smoking lobby as the typical victim du jour. Crowe was said to be a "typical" restaurant worker who spent 40 years working in Ottawa restaurants, all the while breathing the second-hand smoke that’s said to have claimed her life.There are so many things wrong with Heather Crowe’s case that it begs for an official inquiry, but like all politically correct causes the anti-smoking lobby can do no wrong. Crowe, who really did die of lung cancer, was anything but a typical...

Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of secondhand smoking, both because they are small and still growing and because they're often a "captive audience" for tobacco smoke. Now, researchers identify another problem: a greater risk for respiratory complications during outpatient surgical procedures. Dwight Jones, MD, of Children's Hospital Boston and Neil Bhattacharyya, MD, from Brigham and Women's Hospital followed 405 children, 168 of whom came from households with smokers. The children were having day surgical procedures at Children's, ranging from drainage of middle-ear fluid to circumcision to hernia repair. All had general anesthesia and received oxygen through a face...

A new study finds that unborn babies regularly exposed to cigarette smoke in the womb are much more likely to have behavioral problems as young children. The study, detailed in current issue of the journal Child Development, is the first to show a link between smoking during pregnancy and child behavior problems in the first years of life. The researchers found that 2-year-olds whose mothers were exposed to cigarette smoke while pregnant were nearly 12 times more likely to show clinical levels of behavioral problems compared to their unexposed peers. The researchers looked at 93 children between their first and...

First they came for the workplace, then for people's homes and cars, and then the great outdoors.Now the anti-tobacco jihadists, having helped ban smoking in most public and many private places, have turned their attention to the most private space of all — the womb.  That very personal place where humans incubate could be the next battlefield between smokers and those who have never uttered the words: “It's none of my beeswax.” This latest brainstorm comes from Arkansas, where Rep. Bob Mathis successfully shepherded legislation making it unlawful to smoke in cars in which small children are passengers. Apparently...

Everyone knows the traditional reasons why Maine is a great place to take a vacation - it has ocean, mountains, lakes and lobsters.Now the state is promoting one more inducement for people to visit: No smoking is allowed in Maine's public buildings.The state is putting up five signs at various points this week along the Maine Turnpike and Interstate 95 that advertise the fact."Breathe easy, you're in Maine," said the blue signs with white lettering. "All indoor public places are smoke-free."Dr. Dora Anne Mills, who heads the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said Maine may be "the...

BERLIN - A German businessman has founded an airline dedicated to smokers. Smintair, or "Smokers' International Airways," aims to cater for smoking passengers, particularly from Asia, who feel they have been squeezed out of the market. Its first aircraft are due to take off in October on a route between Dusseldorf and Tokyo and are expected to serve mainly Japanese businessmen. ......... "It disturbs me that I pay a lot of money for a ticket only to be told what I can and cannot do," he said.

While some say the introduction of the statewide smoking ban next Saturday will level the playing field, a group of restaurants and bar owners are fuming over what they say are unfair exemptions.Smokers who travel to Colorado’s casinos and Denver International Airport will be able to light up.Puffing on a Basic Ultra Light last week over a game of bingo at Loveland Elks Lodge 1051, Frank Bustos said the law is unfair. “They shouldn’t hold the bar and pool hall owners back,” said Bustos, who has been a smoker for 53 of his 65 years. “Bars are traditionally a...

CINCINNATI—University of Cincinnati (UC) epidemiologists say it’s environmental tobacco smoke—not the suspected visible mold—that drastically increases an infant’s risk for developing allergic rhinitis by age 1. Commonly known as hay fever, allergic rhinitis occurs when a person’s immune system mistakenly reacts to allergens (aggravating particles) in the air. The body then releases substances to protect itself, causing the allergy sufferer to experience persistent sneezing and a runny, blocked nose. This is the first study to show a relationship between environmental tobacco smoke exposure and allergic rhinitis in year-old infants, the UC team reports in the June issue of Pediatric Allergy...