September 21, 2007

LETTERS2theEDITOR

Reader finds smoke-free parks hypocritical

Editor,
When I'm in the picnic areas of our city parks the amount of smoke coming from cigarettes is much less than the smoke coming from wood and charcoal cooking fires (and burning meat).

After reading through many web sites of research on wood smoke versus tobacco smoke I found that there is as much (and more of some) carcinogens in wood smoke as there is in tobacco smoke.

Sure, a closed, cigarette smoke-filled room would be as damaging as a wood smoke-filled room, but out in the open air of parks (or streets)? I'm coming to think that it's a hyped-up scapegoat and smell preference more than anything. I also think the media helps create a hypocritical view of such things with "buzz" subject articles.

I think the San Jose City Council members are being very hypocritical in being for the banning of cigarette smoke in city parks in the midst of the heavy cooking-fires smoke. And even scarier, is the uneducated, following-the-media-hype people who pay little attention to the really bad pollutants that they can't smell or see - that the city council has to answer to.

Mary Zeller

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