The clear facts about second-hand smoke

John Arnone wants to know how we can be certain that people get lung cancer from smoking rather than from air pollution. It’s very simple. In America, for example, non-smokers breathe the same air as smokers, yet the latter suffer tremendously higher rates of lung cancer.
For years, on various websites and in letters to newspapers, Arnone has been implying that the World Health Organisation said air pollution is the real cause of lung cancer. When I quoted the WHO directly (“Causes of cancer closer to home”, Letters, Oct 21) to prove that it has said nothing of the sort, he suddenly denied what he’s been saying for years.
In fact Arnone has never presented one source of information to disprove the hundreds of studies linking second-hand smoke to cancer and the thousands of sources stating that smoking is the primary cause of lung cancer.
If you’re going to write pseudo-intellectual nonsense, Mr Arnone, at least be man enough not to deny it later on.
Eric Bahrt