>
Germany’s politicians have finally seen the light and are actually going to introduce non-smoking legislation.

So it’s not a big surprise that British American Tobacco – around 25% of the market in Germany – had a full page advert in our (only) quality Sunday paper yesterday.

It’s a brilliant idea to save us from global warming.

Ventilation.

Yep, they’ve come up with the idea of pumping 1000 litres of fresh air per customer and minute into pubs/restaurants/bars.

That’ll reduce the CO2 concentration to 20% of the limit set by the Health and Safety people for working environments.

That must be good, then.

(Although I imagine it might be a bit like being stuck in a wind tunnel. Talk about blowing the froth off a wet one….)

So I called them up to congratulate them.

I also asked them about stuff like….

Carbon monoxide Hydrogen cyanide Formaldeyde Acrolein Acetaldehyde Hydrazine Vinyl chloride Urethane Quinoline Benzopyrene Methylfluoroanthene Dibenzacridine Chrysene

(Just some of the toxic and carcinogenic constituents of secondary cigarette smoke)

Hmmm. Didn’t have any information about that.

And why CO2 is such a bad thing in the first place.

Or are they just climbing on the global-warming-CO2-is-bad-for-you bandwagon?

I mean, it’s naturally present in air to the tune of 300-600 ppm and they’re planning on reducing it to… 300ppm.

So the air in a pub where people are smoking is going to be as good as (or better) than fresh air?

Hmmm. The chappy I talked to wasn’t too sure about that either

They’ve promised to call me back.

Just how stupid do they think we are?