Originally Posted by
IndoorAirGuy
If by "solution" you mean, take the concentration levels of tobacco smoke toxins and carcinogens to "zero," then you're right, there is no solution.
I'll say it again:
The risk of chemical exposure is rated by evaluation of three factors: 1) toxicity of the substance; 2) concentration of the toxic substance; 3) duration of exposure to the toxic substance.
There is no such thing as a toxin-free environment. The air in the room where you're reading this contains toxic and carcinogenic substances. The atmosphere outside contains toxins and carcinogens.
Relevant to this discussion: All commercial buildings have many different toxic substances in them whether or not smoking is allowed, especially the ones with piss-poor HVAC designs, builds and maintenance/repair, and alterations without appropriate compensatory adjustments (approximately 60% of the commercial structures out there, hence the existence of my company).
If any exposure whatsoever to toxins was threatening or fatal, we'd all be sick or dead, period. The body is a tough SOB, it's amazingly resilient and it has plenty of its own defenses.
I concede there's no way to take the concentration levels of the toxins in smoking (or nonsmoking) environments down to zero. If "safe" means zero concentration levels, then there's no such thing as a "safe" environment, in your home, where you work, where you play.
If "safe" means keeping the toxin levels down to a point where you need the chemical sensing equivalent of an electron microscope to find them, then yes, absolutely, our technology makes our clients' environments safer than they are without our technology.
If "safe" means the legal definition of safe (i.e., below workplace occupational exposure thresholds), then all our environments are safe.
Furthermore, although I obviously disagree with you, I respect your honesty about your beliefs and I assume you're every bit as honest with the prospective customers who call you to solve IAQs problem for them. You tell them all, "Sorry, but I don't know any way to make your building safe," right?
I ask because I've never met anyone in the ME/MC worlds who actually does that. They all pretend to know how to solve the problem, and keep doing experiments on the owner's nickel until the owner cans them and brings in someone new to waste more of his money.
In 100% of my retrofits, the owner has typically been through 2-3 MEs and 3-5 MCs before he gets to me. So obviously, people of your heartfelt beliefs and integrity are few and far between.
Owners don't hire me because they're concerned about the level of acrolene in their casinos, they hire me because their casinos stink, their customers and employees are pissed off about it, they want the odor to go away (remember "occupant comfort"?) and I have a well-deserved reputation for being the best at it.
The truth is, the anti-smoking crusade is just one more way politics has kidnapped science, put lipstick, rouge and a miniskirt on it, and put it out there on the street to earn its way.
Inarguable science proves smoking is bad for you. Inarguable science proves that if you live or work in an un- or under-ventilated space with smokers, over time you face virtually the same level of risk to your health as the smokers do.
There never has been, and there never will be, any real science that shows exposure to environmental tobacco smoke toxins at the levels found in environments with the massively oversized HVAC systems of the places I work is harmful. Population studies are polls, not science!
If we continue to let the whore politicians keep science hostage, in another generation or two we'll be a nation of freekin' morons (most would agree America is well along the path already).
Finally, the hypocrisy of the tobacco crusaders really puckers my butt. They pretend it's about occupational health and safety, but it's really about using whatever means possible (except for making the stuff illegal) to harass smokers and businesses where people smoke into non-existence.
How do I know this?
Because if they really cared about employee health and safety, they wouldn't bother with smoking because there's so little of it (down to 20% smokers in America now) and instead they'd focus on the horrible air quality in most commercial buildings, many of which have far worse and higher levels of toxins and carcinogens than a well-ventilated smoking building equipped with the right controls and air cleaning technology.
Better yet, they'd focus on the industrial world. We do industrial air cleaning systems too, and the air quality in the "best" industrial environment I've ever been in is far worse than the nastiest, s***hole unventilated dive bar I've ever been in, by a large measure.
So if it's really about health, why all the racket about a pissant problem like tobacco, and why the silence on the rest of the iceberg?