To smoke in my own garden

[LittleBear4]

I am a smoker. I smoke 10 fags a day and I'm not planning on giving it up yet (one day!).

In smoke in my garden, I've got two neighbours either side and one every time I'm smoking will come out and say 'it stinks out here' and will start to cough loudly.

It's really getting on my nerves, I can't move down the end of the garden because it's tiny and would make no difference at all but AIBU to hate the passive aggressive comments when I'm smoking in my garden?

My Neighbour 2 houses away smokes weed and I can smell it as soon as I get home. I have to keep windows closed.

Same when DP goes outside for a fag, closes kitchen door to living room and stands at kitchen door. I can still fucking smell it when I am in the bedroom.

YANBU to smoke in your garden I guess, but you can not complain that they complain about the smell I'm afraid.

Can’t you smoke in front of the house? That’s what my neighbour does.

My god the insults are getting worse...I am categorically NOT a chemical engineer...why would a chemical engineer know anything about biochemical pathways in drug activity?

I'm not over extrapolating anything...I am quoting peer reviewed primary research (that also hasn't over extrapolated anything btw) that concludes totally legitimately that their results show that there is no safe level of cigarette smoke.

Chemical engineer!! 😂🤣

off kissing and sink

Here..do have a and settle in for a little story......

If you can smell smoke then it is present at high enough concentration for it to be detectable (this is a truism, as the nose is the detector in this case). All of the discussion about how far away people are and whether or not the smoke disperses is only relevant to the size of the dose. I reiterate. If I can smell it I have received a dose. The question is how small can that dose be and I can still smell it.

For me personally, I'm going to say that I'll think 'bloody hell is someone smoking outside the window again' when the smell is about between 1 in 100 and 1 in a 1000 the strength it would be for the person actually smoking.

Now I've found some (peer reviewed) data that says 10 fags a week over a decade or so adds an additional 2% chance of death from cancer (I won't bother you with the gruesome stats on heart disease and stroke). The OP is smoking 10 a day....but the neighbour is only getting say 1 in 1000 of the dose. Lets say the op keeps it up for a year, rather than a decade, as she said she intends to quit.

Over that year she will have increased her own death from cancer risk by 1.4%, and she will have increased her neighbours death from cancer risk by 0.0014%.

This is indisputably a very 'so what - I could get hit by a bus crossing the road tomorrow ' type of number.

But I would like to ask you the following question, off kissing and sink. I have here a pill for each of you. Taking it will give you no benefit whatsoever, but will instead give you an additional 1 in 70,000 of dying from cancer. Will you have one?

No?

Oh but you must!

In fact I'm so certain you SHOULD have a pill, whether you want it or not, that I dissolved it in the I gave you earlier.

I hope you don't mind, but I made the and therefore its my decision and not yours whether to give you an additional 1 in 70,000 chance of cancer, right?

surrey I mean don't get me wrong...there's nothing intrinsically wrong with chemical engineers - I know a few who are very lovely indeed...but seriously wtf?

@M3lon
You're still missing key points PPs have patiently clarified, no matter how convoluted you get. In OP's situation, single occasional smoker in her own garden, at far more than that distance outside, actual research studies shows it is negligible. Thank goodness highly respected researchers no longer need to measure with equipment nor publish their results, when they could just use their noses and guess, you're a genius M3lon! That'll make so many research designs much cheaper.

No one has disagreed that it's not nice to occasionally smell it, but have said research studies do not show OP will be giving her NDN's cancer or other SHS health related conditions.
Lol at the matrix reference. 😂

And OP can equally feel aggrieved that her discomfort at stress caused by NDNs is shown in studies on Perceived Stress Scales to contribute to a number of physical and mental health disorders , because apparently she can guess at levels as well (?).

So we can agree to disagree. Some PPs can misquote research findings regardless, and on the other side, assume that a other PPs will think gosh they are misapplying & over reaching.

I don't like smoking around me at all, but I'd be pleased that OP had taken account of genuine research findings and wasn't smoking inside damaging her DC's health, which is a proven SHS health risk.

As several others have said, the exagoration on this thread has been quite something and it hasn't been nice to see an OP slated in the way she has been.

The paper posted really didn't say that.

It said if the smoke isn't getting to you, because its outside and you are up wind / far away, then fine.

But you can't smell the smoke if it isn't getting to you can you?

If you can smell it then it is getting to you. The paper said if the smoke is getting to you then the fact it is outside makes no difference.

Honestly its not that hard to understand.

I thought I'd read the original paper that interview was based on - just to see if they acknowledged these points about geometry and airflow and of course they do (because science works bitches).

Their data show that the transmission of particulates is highly dependent on the local geometry and on wind direction. They note that elevated levels could be measured at a distance of 4m in one set up and that much higher spikes were seen as gusts of air carried the smoke intermittently to specific detectors at different distances and directions.

So the paper fully back up the idea that smoke could be transmitted at detectable levels and sometimes at high levels to detectors many meters away.

The whole POINT of their paper is to demonstrate that there really IS a problem with outdoor smoke transmission that people have been ignoring to date.

Their conclusion is that it is indeed possible to breach the EU regulations on smoke exposure in outdoor locations, and people are justified in putting up no smoking signs in outdoor places, particularly those that are bordered by large buildings (like...oh I don't know...rows of houses?) where air circulation is lower. When they say you won't have a problem 6 ft away they mean that you won't breach the EU limit 6 ft away. 'Problem' here means a problem with employees suing you for exposure.

As we know (at some length) that doesn't mean that lower doses aren't a problem, they just aren't a legal problem for cafe and bar owners.

Its genuinely sad that you have been so desperate to avoid the truth you have ended up using a paper that demonstrates the very real issue of outdoor smoking to attempt to argue the opposite.

the full paper is here by the way if anyone wants to debate the actual facts rather than their fantasy version of them....

@M3lon is IS sad, I agree! Thanks for being one of the few people on here with something intelligent to say!

Hate the smell and the fact I can’t control it coming into my garden.
If I could I wouldn’t be as bothered

I genuinely don't know. Im a smoker, luckily spo are my neighbors, but I can see why a non smoker would/ should be annoyed by it, but then people should be allowed to do whatever (legally) that they want, on their own property.