How do we know how many deaths are caused by SHS?

Very detailed studies were analyzed by the 2006 Surgeon General's Report, giving an accurate estimate of the number of total deaths from SHS. This number is 53,000 deaths per year in the USA.

Approximately 6,000 children die from SHS per year, derived from similar detailed studies of large populations of children in smoking vs non-smoking homes. This leaves 47,000 adults.

Approximately 67% of adults are currently in the US work force (2006 US Census Bureau). In 2006, only 21% of couples had only one income. Over half of those non-working spouses will at some time be part of the workforce, so over 90% of married adults will be at some time part of the workforce. Non-married adults have a slightly higher percentage of work experience. A reasonable estimate is that over 90% of Americans will belong to the workforce for part of their lives.

When considering that any exposure to SHS is cumulative, any workplace exposure stays with that person for life. Even though most workers may get SHS exposure in other places, such as the home or recreational venues, that does not negate the fact that part of the damage was done at the workplace. For example, if a worker were exposed to mercury in the workplace, but also happened to eat tuna with mercury in it, the workplace would still be liable for its violation of mercury exposure.

Even though eliminating SHS from the workplace would not prevent all deaths from SHS, OSHA regulation of SHS could potentially prevent any one of the exposed workers from dying. Among workers who died from SHS-related causes, one must say that the workplace exposure at least contributed to their death. Hence, total lifetime work experience (90%) may be used to reflect all potential exposure by workers.

90% of 47,000 is 42,300 deaths per year (non-smoking workers killed by SHS). Now the question is what percentage of these workers would not have died if OSHA had provided guidelines for clean air in the workplace?

We can weight the actual time of exposure at the workplace as a percentage of total SHS exposure, and take this percentage out of the 42,300 deaths of workers from SHS. This percentage is difficult to estimate, since not all workers work indoors, and some workers are exposed to SHS at home or in other places. Even if work exposure to SHS is only half of the total lifetime exposure, the number of deaths caused by OSHA would still exceed 20,000 per year.

In the 1990's this would be a good estimate of workers' deaths from SHS, so the first ten years of OSHA's failure to act would account for over 200,000 deaths. In the last few years, more industries are voluntarily going smoke-free, and many workers are protected by local smoke-free laws. This has cut workers' exposure to SHS in half, so our estimate of workers' deaths from SHS in this decade is about 10,000 deaths per year. This is still double the loss of life in the 9/11 attack, and it repeats every year!