Letter to the Editor: Adagio Health Missteps

To the Editor:

I find highly suspect the choices of State Sens. Mary Jo White and Jane Earll as Adagio Health Tempo Award winners, this esteemed organization recognizing their purported efforts to “improve the health and well-being of families in Western Pennsylvania” ("VIPink honors efforts to improve Western Pa. health," Seen, 20 August).

Assuming that these individuals have contributed to better public health, they obviously have an enormous blind spot where the issue of second-hand smoke is concerned, given that both of them voted against the state law which bans smoking in most public places and both voting to riddle with exemptions the watered-down law that eventually passed after years of needless and often senseless debate.

Second-hand smoke was declared a first-class carcinogen by former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona, and studies since then have concluded that there is a danger to one’s health even from ingesting smoke that is put into the air in the outdoors.

I would be interested to know whether Pennsylvanians would elect to return to the Dark Ages in which we were forced to endure smoke-filled offices, stores and restaurants. Perhaps Sens. White and Earll regard those as the good old days.

One would wonder how it is that two legislative leaders could be so wrong on a basic issue of public health, yet be honored for their “accomplishments” in the field. It surely sounds farcical to me!

Oren Spiegler
Upper St. Clair