Sustained exposure to that concentration of PM 2.5 is equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes a day, said Sarath Guttikunda, the director of Urban Emissions, an independent research group.
On this basis, I did some calculations.
There were 180 countries in attendance, each comprising three delegates, and with other accredited attendees it is reported that around 1,500 were there. Over 8 days that means that the COP7 contingent 'smoked' between them the equivalent of around 480,000 fags!
Yet while waiting for three and a half hours for my pass to enter the venue, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of delegates - you know, the ones who panic about a few wisps of smoke or vapour - worried enough about the danger to take precautions in the form of a mask or other prevention measure. Just saying.
I took some video and pictures while I was there and the boy P has edited it into a concise one minute film. It's a taste of the city under the smog; enjoy.
By far the funniest story of this COP7 week for me was the curious case of the voluntary spunking of UK taxes by our delegation, most probably aided and abetted as usual by ASH.
This was the obsequious praise heaped upon our lot in Monday's news round-up.
If you weren't aware of it, this is because when asked for more cash by the FCTC, the UK delegation - while the rest of the world's tobacco tax scroungers at COP7 looked at the floor and wisely sat on their hands - voluntarily coughed up another £15m of your money, with which to bully smokers in other countries. As The Sun explains ...
WHITEHALL busybodies were slammed last night after signing off £15 million of UK taxpayers money to stop people smoking in poor countries like North Korea and Syria. The Department of Health will use Britain’s aid budget to support global quitting measures — prompting calls for the money to be spent on doctors and nurses back in Britain.
The crazy hand out was confirmed yesterday at the UN World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control conference in Greater Noida, India. Britain committed to contributing £3 million per year until 2021 to the ‘Agenda for Sustainable Development’.
Now, if I'm a politician in the UK government, this makes perfect sense to me. Because, you see, they're constantly getting it in the neck for handing out development cash willy-nilly only for governments in developing countries to spend it how they choose (remember India's space programme?).
But this has a tag on it called "bash the smokers" so will be seen as targeted action. Especially since we are talking about those icky foreign smokers, it's just a no-brainer for your common or garden career politician, isn't it? It buys off some of the UKIP-style criticism of overseas aid and is easily explained.
But last night the Department of Health defended the cash boost, saying: “Smoking rates in many countries are much higher than in the UK and all UN members have a role to play in bringing them down to reduce deaths where the need is greatest.”
They're not wrong. UK tobacco controllers have been jubilant about how successful they have been (even though most of the big shift has been down to e-cigs), so why would we need to spend so much cash on UK stop smoking initiatives when attendance at stop smoking services is drastically down?
A sharp decline in the number of smokers using an NHS support programme to help them quit has been linked to the rise in popularity of e-cigarettes.
Nationwide figures have shown a similar trend to those in the south west of Scotland.
In 2013, the Information Services Division reported that the number of attempts to stop smoking had fallen by 13% compared with 2012.
This is just part of a fairly long-running trend, numbers using such services have fallen dramatically since 2010 when widespread uptake of e-cigs started to take hold.
Of course, if user numbers are down, it follows naturally that government would be reluctant to spend the same funding on it, hence why stop smoking services are reportedly strapped for cash. In fact, ASH produced a report recently detailing this very phenomena.
Overall, smoking cessation budgets were down: in 39 per cent of local authorities, smoking cessation budgets had been cut compared to only 5 per cent where they had increased. They stayed the same in 54 per cent of local authorities. More than a quarter of local authorities (29 per cent) had seen cuts of more than 5 per cent.
And rightly so. If fewer people are using the services it's obvious that the funds should be spent elsewhere. As yer man from the Department of Health said above, "smoking rates in many countries are much higher than in the UK", so obviously all committed, upstanding, philanthropic anti-smokers would applaud the cash being diverted from the UK to other places where prevalence is higher. Yes?
Again, as a politician, this is two birds with one stone. I get to give a tangible reason for part of the much-criticised aid budget and also to justify cuts to UK services since it is admitted that tobacco control has been so wildly successful that there is little demand for old-fashioned stop smoking clinics.
My own personal view is that stop smoking services are not required at all, for two reasons. One, it is no role of the state to pay for people to quit something they have chosen to do simply because government doesn't like it; and two, in recent times there are many options other than government interventions which can do the same job. When there are rumours that such services might close, it's a reason for celebration because they are a vast nationwide waste of money. I have to say it is especially sweet to hear about their (quite rightly) being cut in the constituency of one of ASH's lapdogs such as Bob Blackman, something which he complained about recently in the House of Commons. Delicious.
So congratulations to the UK delegation for re-allocating £15m of our taxes from where the tobacco control industry considers it is not needed, to where it is. And it was the UK anti-smoking delegates who went to India and voluntarily signed off the re-distribution.
As a result, from now on the bleating about how stop smoking services are struggling for cash really should cease, because after Monday any sane politician wouldn't even consider changing their mind. After all, ASH and the DH have just admitted that the funding is needed far more elsewhere than in the UK.
So Monday was the day that the WHO's biennial back-slapping jamboree comprising the world's most accomplished miserable tax troughers began. COP7 was to take place at the Expo Mart complex in Noida, about an hour's drive from New Delhi centre.
I travelled with two Indian vapers and a representative of the newly-formed Association of Vapers India to the venue in the worst smog I've seen so far. This is just one of the pictures I took on the way; to be clear, it is not supposed to be in black and white.
The sun was up and is in that shot, not that you'd notice at first glance. After a trip up the expressway with the odour of sulphur blowing out of the car's ventilation system, we arrived at a heavily-guarded convention centre in the middle of absolutely nowhere, equally shrouded in dank mist.
On arrival, there were a dozen or so people hanging around who we'd later find out were Indian tobacco farmers, justifiably concerned about what those inside were threatening to do to their livelihoods. More about them later.
We entered the venue at just before 7:30am and joined the queue to apply for the limited number of public passes for the event at a registration plaza which catered for all different types of attendee ...
... and there we waited - in a stationary queue - for another three and a half hours!
It was quite clear what was happening. Delegates were turning up in regular coachloads, and it didn't matter how late they were, they were seen before anyone in the public queue. We watched as the inept registration system processed people lazily wandering in as late as 10:45, kept them in a queue of their own for a while before issuing them with a photo ID with which they then entered the venue for the joyless day ahead.
Finally, when the hall was emptied of about a thousand people it had seen that morning, the organisers contemptuously decided the public had waited enough and reluctantly accepted our registration forms and gave us a badge ... a full hour after the conference had started.
Now, no matter how paranoid they are about tobacco industry personnel applying for passes - and there were some there, all of whom declared their affiliations on the form as far as I could ascertain - to treat interested observers so shabbily illustrates the utter contempt they have for the public. If the FCTC really doesn't like the idea of allowing observers in to watch their dreary deliberations, they should be more honest about it and not offer the passes in the first place. They didn't seem to care that ordinary members of the public could be kept standing for such a long period of time, instead more interested in inconveniencing a few tobacco company employees who their skewed priorities have declared as the enemy rather than smoking, which they claim to be acting against.
Amongst those being treated so badly were a group of elected Mayors from Brazil, who jabbered entertainingly away in Portuguese before noticing one of the Brazilian delegation wandering through the hall. On seeing this, they surrounded him to make the case for the thousands of tobacco farmers in their constituencies, while he smiled weakly and tried to placate them.
Who knows what he said to them to ease their concerns, but it wouldn't matter one iota because the COP7 conference doesn't give a shit if farmers lose their businesses and die in poverty; the crusade against the tobacco industry is far more important to their neurotic bigotry than the small matter of people earning a living.
Talking of which, by this time word had reached us that the farmers we saw outside had held a brief protest before heading for a building down the road to have a meeting.
They weren't quite far enough away for the elites of the tobacco control industry though, so the police used a new rule that had been implemented the night before - banning more than four people walking together - to tell the farmers they had broken the law and that their meeting was cancelled. They were then told to get back on their buses and leave the area or be arrested. Most did but some were, indeed, arrested.
They were then escorted 40km away and told to go home and not venture back. It was a little after this that it was announced that delegates would come out to address the farmers' concerns ...
... but they were long evacuated and, d'you know, I think the delegates were well aware of the fact.
Which reminds me, while recording a sweeping shot of the hall, I inadvertently captured the Indian Health Minister thanking the police for not letting anything go wrong at the conference.
Like ensuring objecting farmers are kept miles away, does he mean? Now that's service!
Anyhow, back to your humble host's experience. Eventually, at just vefore 11am, I and others in the public queue managed to receive our passes and entered the venue. Quite impressive it was too.
I sat, with the others in the pen sectioned off for the public, and watched for the best part of two hours; I would like to say I was equally impressed with the speakers, but that would be a lie, I wasn't. What surprised me most was how amateurish and disorganised the whole thing was. It was clear that none of those I saw were good at public speaking, and amongst the mumbling and incoherent newspeak were long pauses while the room waited embarrassingly for something to happen. At one point, the whole thing was stopped while the head of the secretariat had a chat backstage with the Sri Lankan Prime Minister. It was quite surreal.
And as for the subject matter, well it was the same old tired paranoia, sadly.
More than half of the @FCTCofficial conference has been about rules about who can enter the #COP7FCTC. Very Orwellian.
This is very true. A large part of the COP events now seem to be taken up with justifying the FCTC's pathetic obsession with excluding anyone who doesn't agree 100% with their policies. Bizarrely, following this chain of deranged thought, Vera da Costa condemned "those amongst us" who worked for tobacco companies but sullied the public pass system by, erm, applying for one. I must admit to finding her concern for the public rather hollow considering the 300 minute wait her administrators had inflicted on us. But then, I don't think her focus was on the public at all, she - along with everyone else there - are just miffed they have to pretend to be transparent at all! A fact borne out at last knockings on the day as the customary evacuation of the heretics was announced. No public or press allowed for the rest of the week's proceedings, and that included even being in the grounds of the venue!
DESPICABLE: Every country at the WHO anti-tobacco meeting voted unanimously to kick out the press & the public #cop7fctc#UndemocraticWHO
Not that those present had any intention of making the public feel welcome anyway, there was a camera trained constantly on our area ...
... and every now and then a delegate would come up and take pictures of the public gallery before scuttling off again, presumably to tell all their friends how nasty we were for coming along to watch. The most prominent of these - and the most hilariously surreal moment of the day - was Debs Arnott who darted, weasel-like, around us to take about five swift pictures from a number of different angles.
She then trotted off to complain - like some pinch-lipped puritan seeing vape in a Polish assembly room - to an anonymous someone by furiously tapping at her phone's keyboard. All very amusing, I have to say.
All in all, a day packed full of the usual COP wince-inducing hilarity, but almost hypnotic despite the incredibly dull and colourless content being presented on stage; I find that observing events at the FCTC's flagship biennial events is one of those things you know you shouldn't do because you won't like what you see, but you can't help yourself ... rather like rubber-necking at a three car pile up.
Sadly - or not as the case may be - I was forced to exit at just before 1pm as my lift was leaving and I didn't fancy getting stranded miles from my hotel or to face getting a pricey cab without sufficient rupees on me. So we set off to sample some Indian street food before heading over to the Royal Connaught Hotel to meet some inspiring Asian vapers.
I'll tell you about that event in the next article because I wouldn't do them the disservice of sticking them on the same page as the lifeless, state-funded, soul-sucking, freedom-hating bog trolls at COP7 an hour up the road. Watch this space.
If any of you have been following my tweets recently, you'll have gathered that I'm in India to experience the World Health Organisation's COP7 farce first-hand. Well, not exactly first-hand since the conference itself is notoriously known to exclude anyone and everyone who might offer a different slant on proceedings than that preferred by the WHO's junk science-laden FCTC.
Still, COP6 two years ago in Moscow was such a hilarious exercise in incompetence that I made a note then to go to the next one. I thought it might be hard to top that but before the bansturbator beano has even begun, the jokes have already started.
Chain smokers moving to Delhi to save money after hearing that breathing there is like smoking 40 cigarettes
That satirical headline has been prompted by widespread reports of appalling pollution in New Delhi where COP7 is taking place. Apparently, it is the worst the city has seen for 17 years.
According to one advocacy group, government data shows that the smog that enveloped the city midweek was the worst in the last 17 years. The concentration of PM2.5, tiny particulate pollution that can clog lungs, averaged close to 700 micrograms per cubic meter. That’s 12 times the government norm and a whopping 70 times the WHO standards.
Sustained exposure to that concentration of PM 2.5 is equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes a day, said Sarath Guttikunda, the director of Urban Emissions, an independent research group.
And delegates should be aware of what this means to their pristine lungs as they arrive for the 5 day misery-fest.
Particulate matters (PM) are tiny particles in the air that cause visibility problems and health hazards. The permissible level of PM 2.5 is 60µg/m³ while PM10 is 100 µg/m³. Levels beyond that can cause harm to the respiratory system as the ultra fine particulates can embed themselves deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream.
Best invest in a mask, FCTC boys and girls.
If you want to know what it looks like, by the way, here's a lovely view of sunrise over Delhi on my flight in.
To clarify, those aren't clouds we were flying over, because there weren't any, that was on the approach to land and is a thick immovable bank of grime sitting stubbornly over the city. Here's the view from my smokefree (natch) hotel window.
So it seems that anti-smoking obsessives from all over the world - who constantly bark that choosing to smoke, vape or use smokeless tobacco is a health crisis - are walking into a solid gold, proper, bona fide public health crisis which puts their pathetic bleating exaggerations to shame.
It is in this atmosphere that the FCTC are going to spend hours arguing that smoking in a windy park and entirely harmless vaping in public should be banned. Risible, huh? I spoke to Jeff Stier of Washington's National Centre for Policy Research who is also here, and he commented "The WHO are summoning their tobacco control elites here, and in their minds this smog is about as dangerous as one vape!". Sadly, if you read some of the utter garbage that the FCTC cite in their pre-COP report, he is probably right.
I had to laugh on seeing the COP7 help desk in the airport arrivals hall, just next to an exit where people were donning masks just to step out into the 'fresh' air or choking if they didn't have one. It kinda puts it all into context, doesn't it?
"Hello Sir, here's your agenda, security pass and gas mask"
There have been numerous articles in the media about this event in recent weeks as the world has started to wake up to the secrecy and paranoia of the FCTC, so there might be quite a few eyes on what goes on this week. It's not the start the tobacco control industry Goliath would have wished for is it?
I'll be here for a while yet and, as someone with grizzled old lungs think I should survive the duration. I will keep you posted.
Surely today has seen the funniest load of disingenuous bollocks ASH has ever released.
ASH research shows corner shops don’t need tobacco to be profitable
Well actually, their report, Counter-arguments (geddit?), would be funny except for the fact that - in the absence of anything useful to do with the taxes government regularly shovel this wasteful bunch of parasites - you paid for it.
Snowdon has already sliced and diced it (a simple task since their economic acumen alone wouldn't even merit a GCSE E grade) but I did find this part particularly hilarious.
Newcastle-based small retailer John McClurey agrees, but says corner shops have little choice but to sell tobacco:
“I have little choice to sell tobacco as many of my customers still smoke. But tobacco makes me very little money while tying up plenty of cash in stock. Tobacco is a burden to me.
Now, this is the best supporter ASH could find in the trade and he admits that he cannot stop selling tobacco because it is a necessity to his business.
It's very simple, John. If you believe what ASH says - that "corner shops don’t need tobacco to be profitable", simply stop selling it.
He believes it’s time for change and welcomes the ASH report because it challenges retailers to consider whether tobacco companies and their local reps really have retailers’ interests in mind.
McClurey added:
“The decline in the market, the disappearance of cigarettes behind gantry doors and the shift to plain packaging have made the traditional approach to selling tobacco out-dated. A better alternative for retailers is to reduce stock, shift the gantry and free-up space for products that actually turn a decent profit.”
Well off you go then, Johnny-boy, what's stopping you?
Here's the guy, next to those products he's been selling for over 30 years and which, it would appear, he doesn't intend to stop selling anytime soon.
Why? because, on the same day as ASH released their report, buried at the bottom of their bastard cousin ASH Scotland's daily news round-up was this article in Wholesale News(emphases mine).
“Independents account for 50% of all tobacco sales in the UK and this has been driven by PMPs which have around 80% of the market and have proven popular with both retailers and shoppers. By premium pricing tobacco products, many retailers are only forcing smokers to go to the multiple retailers who are still charging at the RRP or below. Offering a compelling price on tobacco will keep customers coming through the door as it is the primary driver of footfall into c-stores. We do not need to give the multiples a hand-up when it comes to attracting customers. Instead retailers have to protect and develop their own businesses. I firmly believe that it’s ‘RRP or RIP’ for many independent stores as their businesses are at risk if reduced traffic comes through their doors.
“We have seen from Australia that retailers who price at RRP or below have had no adverse effect on their tobacco sales. This is critically important as the tobacco shopper visits c-stores more regularly than non-smokers and spends almost £1,500 per year more in store. As a customer group, these shoppers are vital to your business and for your continued success, you need to retain these shoppers rather than drive them to rivals.”
ASH, it would seem, would prefer corner shops to commit business suicide just to satisfy their extremist feud with tobacco companies. Needless to say, if that were to happen, salaries of the hideous tax-scrounging trolls at ASH would not suffer one little bit.
But it's not going to happen anyway. If even the anti-smoking lobby's only supporter in the retail trade (they stick him on the end of a broom handle quite often to spout their shit as a result) admits that his business needs to sell tobacco and would suffer if it didn't, what the hell is the point in ASH's report today?
Meanwhile, in the real world, newsagents and tobacconists will be lobbying MPs tomorrow with a manifesto entitled "Fair Deal for Small Shops", which will doubtless include criticism of the many abuses their trade has suffered at the hands of the selfish, ivory tower, empathy-free extremists at ASH. And will be backed by every small retailer up and down the country with the exception of John McClury ... who still sells tobacco.
Now, who would you believe about the economics of the convenience store business? Those who work in it day to day, 99.9% of whom believe ASH to be a force for evil? Or ASH, who would find it difficult to push beads around an abacus without a detailed manual and have never had to turn an honest profit in their lives, and their lone retail supporter who says convenience stores should stop selling tobacco even though he can't himself without going bust?
Please! Someone cut off ASH's fucking funding, for crying out loud, they're beginning to embarrass themselves.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but then some with very little knowledge have made a lucrative living on the back of their ignorance.
Take Simon Chapman, for example. Fresh from a triumphant tour of Europe including a London stopover - on expenses, natch - chatting to a dozen of his pals, the increasingly irrelevant fossilised tobacco control brick-brain has been pouring forth again. This time about the upcoming industry GTNF conference.
"... in setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, Parties shall act to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law"
Parties, Simon, parties. In this context, parties are national governments, not individuals.
Looking down the list of speakers to which the geriatric Aussie plonker links, there is not a single one who is affiliated with any national government anywhere in the world! So his pointing to the WHO's article 5.3 is entirely irrelevant, as is mention of 180 nations who are collectively sending no government officials there.
We should be careful not to be too harsh on poor old Simon in case this is a dementia thing, of course, but it does kinda help if someone involved in the tobacco control scam were to actually know something about the rules that his grubby profession created. Doncha think?
I do sometimes wonder where these strict tobacco control scruples disappeared to when UK and hundreds of other national government officials attended COP6 in 2014 in a country which had just blasted a packed passenger plane out of the sky and was under worldwide sanctions.
Now, much as it pains me to keep mentioning the embarrassing event last week where hardly anyone turned up to see the legendary vandal academic Simon Chapman (after he bravely taunted vapers for not attending despite having demanded they be banned) ... it appears to be the gift that just keeps on giving.
Y'see, he's been questioning the figures.
It's a clever (albeit customarily rude and arrogant) attempt at misdirection by the dunderheaded lobcock, but anyone who has ever arranged a function of any sort knows that those who say they will turn up is never even close to the number who actually do. And his estimation of the 'crowd' differs greatly to those of three personal accounts I have come across, the most generous of which could only say "12 maybe, at a push".
Of course, considering Chappers was there for the whole day, and definitely for the hour that he stood in front of them reading his speech from a piece of paper, perhaps - I dunno - he could have counted them? Or maybe he was unsighted? Reading with his back to the audience? Frosted glass between him and those in attendance, perchance; or perhaps his eyesight is failing, it would be understandable for someone of his age and failing faculties I suppose.
Still, we shouldn't mock the afflicted, he's never been that great at adding up, after all. Maybe counting to 12 was just too taxing.
Following on from yesterday's article about the global joke that is Simon Chapman, you can't help but laugh at this.
Brave and fearless Chappers was just itching to face up to his detractors,so he was. So very disappointed that no-one turned up to listen to his fuckwittery, what with us all having jobs and stuff instead of being paid out of the public's taxes to go on holiday.
So imagine how surprising it was to read this about brave, brave Sir Simon.
So on the one hand he was dying to bravely hold a position of exalted power over vapers in the audience by way of a microphone and more chance to speak but, on the other, cowardly demands that no-one be allowed to challenge him from a position of equality.
I do believe this is called having one's cake and eating it. Still, if it makes the old fool happy as he becomes progressively more irrelevant, it would be pretty cruel of us to deprive him of his delusions of grandeur, don't you think? Believe me, you're going to miss high comedy like this when he carks it.
UPDATE: In fact, as I now understand it, brave Chappers specifically demanded of the RSM that none of the "vaping mafia" - as he put it - be allowed to attend the event at all! How odd, then, that he should tweet complaining that there wereno vapers in attendance, eh?
Presumably, by cherry-picking images he had collected from Twitter feeds of the many people who attended the event, he was attempting to dismiss the gathering as somehow irrelevant or something, because - as I made an effort to find out at the time - there was quite an impressive turnout.
"Attendance comprised in excess of 250 delegates representing 43 countries in Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and Australasia. Our records show that 42 vaping consumers registered to attend."
So, if Chappers would describe over 250 delegates from 43 countries "a small meeting" and therefore a target for ridicule, I wonder what he would make of this?
Just ten? So what on Earth was happening at this - by Chapman's logic, quite pathetic and miniscule - event to cause so many people to stay away in their droves?
10.15 am “A sneeze in one country causes international pneumonia tomorrow”: explaining the plain packaging pandemic
Professor Simon Chapman, Emeritus Professor in the School Public Health, University of Sydney
3.15 pm Years well spent. A reflection on a professional lifetime spent in public health advocacy
Professor Simon Chapman
Of course, unlike the many images posted on social media confirming big attendances at GFN last year, we have no way of verifying Munafo's estimate because no-one tweeted any pics. So we have to use caution and go by 'public health's' margins of error - that is, the 'crowd' could have been as high as 11 or as low as 9!
By way of comparison, an event at the very same venue in July this year to discuss the question "has regulation of pleasure gone too far?" attracted an audience of around 40, the vast majority of whom were interested medics.
As some wag quite astutely pointed out on Twitter, if environmentalist and advocate for action on climate change Chappers wanted to have a cozy little chat with a few friends and acquaintances in London, perhaps he could have done so on Skype instead of flying halfway around the world to talk to the vanishing few who want to listen to his narcissistic burbling.
