EXCERPTS from Minnesota's newspaper, The Duluth News-Tribune, May 3, 2000, writer Melanie Evans; headlined:  The power of second-hand smoke,  Research suggests inhaling smoke has similar health effects as smoking, More on Duluth's proposed smoking ban

                      It is a truism that emerged unscathed after more than a half-century of legal
                      challenges and medical scrutiny: Smoking kills.

                      But what about that lazy trail of smoke that lilts from a lit cigarette into the
                      open air?

                      Scientists agree it contains the same cocktail of harmful compounds that
                      smokers inhale, more than 55 cancer-causing chemicals including
                      formaldehyde, arsenic and the powerful toxin benzoapyrene.

                      They also agree that nonsmokers inhale and digest the toxic smoke just as
                      their smoking counterparts do, albeit in smaller quantities. Traces of
                      chemicals found only in tobacco turn up in biological studies of nonsmokers
                      frequently exposed to cigarette smoke.

                      Tobacco causes increasingly stiff and narrow arteries that precipitate a heart
                      attack. Its chemicals create long-lasting genetic mutations that blossom into
                      lung cancer.

                      But how much damage does so-called passive smoking cause? Can
                      involuntary exposure, over time, wreak similar damage on the heart and
                      lungs of someone who has never lit up?

                      During the past, biologists and courts have wrestled with the question,
                      occasionally arriving at different answers. Fueled by regulators' zeal to hold
                      the tobacco industry accountable for America's epidemic of
                      smoking-related illness, the legal and scientific debate has intensified during
                      the last five years.

                      And geneticists, epidemiologists and molecular and cellular biologists point
                      to a growing body of research on secondhand smoke.

                      Large research studies single out environmental tobacco smoke as the
                      culprit for a number of childhood ailments and chronic diseases: asthma, ear
                      infections, eye irritation and low birth weight babies.

                      A 1998 study, published in the Journal of the American Medical
                      Association, found secondhand smoke increased the rate at which
                      nonsmokers' arteries clog or harden by 20 percent.

                      Reports like these worry Bridgeman's waitress Carrie Newberg. Her father,
                      grandfather and grandmother all died of heart disease at early ages, 53, 56
                      and 38, respectively. Newberg turned 36 Tuesday.

                      Three of her four weekly shifts landed her in the Duluth restaurant's smoking
                      section, where the fumes aggravated her allergies. ``By the time I would get
                      home, I would have such a headache,'' she said.

                      Newberg and several Bridgeman's employees approached the restaurant's
                      operations manager, Warren Nelson, about eliminating the smoking section.
                      ``I just felt like it was a major factor for my health,'' she said.

                      He agreed.

                      The restaurant went smoke-free April 24.

                      Newberg is thrilled. The irritation, sneezing and sinus trouble that plagued
                      her at the end of each eight-hour shift have subsided. The air is clean, she
                      said.

                      The amount of secondhand smoke circulating in the air of restaurants and
                      bars can vary, according to recent medical studies. In some research,
                      investigators found the presence of smoke is no more than levels found in
                      the home of a smoker.

                      In other reports, the amount of smoke recorded in air samples was six times
                      that found in other workplaces and four times that found in the home of a
                      smoker, leading researchers to estimate that some hospitality industry
                      employees face as much as a 50 percent increased risk of developing lung
                      cancer.

                      The most clear-cut example of secondhand smoke's effects surface in
                      studies of lung cancer, where a unique trail of chemical footprints left by
                      harmful tobacco compounds has linked all cigarette smoke -- including
                      secondhand -- to the development of tumors.

                      Each time a person breathes in tobacco smoke, it triggers the body's
                      intricate genetic survival plan against cancer -- one that doesn't always
                      succeed.

                      Once inhaled, the smoke's cancerous chemicals come under attack as the
                      body tries to break down the toxic material into less harmful elements that it
                      can digest and reject.

                      This first line of defense can fail. More virulent chemicals can turn the tables.
                      Instead of falling prey to the body's foot soldiers -- proteins called enzymes
                      -- the cancer-causing agents take root and form a powerful, and potentially
                      unshakable, bond with DNA.

                      This tight link can mutate DNA, the genetic code found in each of the
                      body's 100 trillion cells. Genes carry instructions that guide cell growth.

                      Altering those instructions can produce fatal consequences: In cases of lung
                      cancer, scientists worry in particular about tampering with two genes.

                      One promotes the growth of tumors; the other suppresses them. Altering
                      either can make conditions ripe for cancerous tumors to flourish.

                      Desperate to shake loose from this destructive bond before it causes
                      damage to the genetic code, the body dispatches enzymes to repair cells'
                      DNA.

                      This second line of defense can fail too, triggering a last-ditch effort to rid
                      the body of the cell entirely, a sort of hari-kari of the cell, by which it
                      commits a programmed suicide.

                      Not all of the cells follow the body's survival code: Too many such rouges,
                      and a colony of mutated cells develops into a cancerous tumor.

                      Why do genetic defenses fail in some cases and succeed in others? What
                      makes some people more susceptible to developing lung cancer and others
                      seemingly immune?

                      Researchers aren't sure. That's because a number of factors, such as family
                      history and diet, can affect somebody's susceptibility.

                      But one thing is very clear for Dr. Stephen Hecht, Wallin Professor of
                      Cancer Prevention at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Cancer
                      Center.

                      ``It's established, rock solid: Smoking causes cancer,'' Hecht said.

                      ``Everything you see in smokers,'' he continued -- listing the complex
                      biological struggle to rid cells of smoke's toxic chemicals -- ``the same is
                      true for people exposed to secondhand smoke.

                      ``It's just a matter of dosage.''

                      And dosage matters, he said. Nonsmokers have a lower risk for developing
                      lung cancer than smokers because they are less frequently exposed to
                      smoke, he said. And their bodies don't have to fend off smoke's toxic
                      chemicals as often.

                      But the risk is still there.

                      All Hecht needs to illustrate his point are studies of nonsmokers' urine that
                      contain the same chemical residue from cigarettes that smokers' urine
                      carries.

                      Assessing that risk is more difficult, though, largely because there are fewer
                      lung-cancer patients who never smoked available to study.

                      Science and public awareness still fail to fully comprehend risks associated
                      with secondhand smoke, said Dr. Richard Hurt, a physician from the Mayo
                      Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and the director of its nicotine dependence
                      center.

                      In time, the scientific condemnation of secondhand smoke will equal medical
                      distaste for smoking cigarettes, he said.

                      ``We're now to the point with ETS that we were at in 1964 with cigarettes,''
                      said Hurt, who testified before the Duluth City Council Monday evening.

                      The Surgeon General's landmark report on secondhand smoke, released in
                      1986, wasn't published until 22 years after the office's first study on
                      cigarette smoking among U.S. adults.

                      The fledgling field is subject to the same political crossfire earlier debates
                      over smoking, Hurt added.

                      He should know. Hurt testified on behalf of Minnesota in the state's
                      landmark lawsuit against the tobacco industry. He was among the first to sift
                      through internal documents revealing the industry's public relations campaign
                      against smoking research.

                      Not all are as convinced as Hurt. The debate over secondhand smoke's
                      liability remains an undecided one in the nation's courtrooms.

                      In 1998, a federal judge found the Environmental Protection Agency made
                      scientific mistakes when drafting a 1992 report that declared as many as
                      3,000 lung cancer deaths each year resulted from secondhand smoke.

                      ``In this case, the EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before research
                      had begun,'' wrote Federal District Court Judge William Osteen.

                      And in June 1999, for the second time in as many years, a jury refused to
                      find the tobacco industry liable for the cancer death of a nonsmoker
                      frequently exposed to secondhand smoke.

                      Hurt, a former smoker (two packs a day for 12 years), dismisses lingering
                      questions about the harmful nature of secondhand smoke. The current
                      growing body of research provides a powerful argument against exposing
                      the unwilling to the cigarette gases.

                      As proof, he cites new studies that link sudden infant death syndrome to
                      postnatal exposure to cigarette smoke.

                      ``I don't know how much more science we need,'' he argued. "How much
                      is enough?''

    Added May 6, 2000