Submarines exempt from smoking ban
Scotland's workplace smoking ban will not apply to submarines at sea, the Scottish Executive has revealed. Workers are set to be allowed to light up in designated smoking rooms on Navy subs and refuelling vessels following a request from the Ministry of Defence.
Source: BBC News (15 November 2005)
posted by Simon Clark @ 17:09
2 comments
2 Comments:
I have been a smoker all my life and as I served in the Royal Navy for 33 years with the help of duty free supplies was a fairly heavy smoker. Of those 33 years I served 21 years in conventional submarines where even you didn't smoke you certainly had more than your fair share of passive smoking as the majority, by the nature of the job, smoked but there were those who did not.
If it were possible to carry out a survey of as many as will take part, of ex-submariners who did not smoke and will be around my age of 67 give or take 10 years I would think this would give a very good FACTUAL indication as to the risks of passive smoking. I don't think any of us smokers would like to cause any other person any harmful effects from our habit but with all this, so I believe, not proven hysteria about passive smoking somehow this risk has to be properly evaluated so all of us can consider the FACTS and then act constructively.
The sillyness of banning smoking everywhere else by claiming that air filtration systems don't work, and then allowing smoking on a submarine should be obvious to anyone. Whatever threat there COULD possibly be from secondary smoke is so minute in the overall scheme of things that it should be treated as a joke.
Antismokers' myopia gets in the way of thinking though. Check out the following news excerpt from a year or so ago. Normally one might think that when a submarine loaded with enough nuclear bombs to blow Europe to hell and back had a crash that the big story would be concern about the bombs. But was it? Nooooo.... check it out yourself and then ask if the Antismokers really have succeeded in leading us into KrazyVille.
http://tc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/extract/14/4/221
USA: injuries in the smoking room when a nuclear sub crashes
Nick Wilson and George Thomson
Wellington Medical School, University of Otago, New Zealand; gthomson@wnmeds.ac.nz
The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.
In January this year a US nuclear powered attack submarine, the USS San Francisco, crashed into an undersea mountain that was not marked on the navigation chart being used. A total of 99 crew members were injured, particularly in the areas that were relatively open: the smoking room, the crew’s mess, and the engine rooms. The one crew member who sustained fatal injuries was smoking in the smoking room at the time.
It is perhaps surprising to think that there is actually space in a submarine for a smoking room. Indeed, it seems somewhat alarming that smoking is permitted given that there must be some (albeit small) increased fire risk. Furthermore, there are concerns around the performance of nicotine dependent workers—given the data that smokers are at increased risk of workplace injuries.
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The inmates are truly running the asylum.
:/
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
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