New cig peril: Third-hand smoke coats puffers in poison
Deadly 'electronic gaspers' fingered, too
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US federal boffins in Berkeley, California say they have discovered yet another deadly hazard associated with smoking. They also raise warnings regarding the perils associated with electronic cigarettes.
The dangers of actually smoking a cigarette, and those from breathing a smoker's "second hand" smoke were well-known: but now we learn of that insidious killer "third hand smoke".
"The burning of tobacco releases nicotine in the form of a vapor that adsorbs strongly onto indoor surfaces, such as walls, floors, carpeting, drapes and furniture. Nicotine can persist on those materials for days, weeks and even months. Our study shows that when this residual nicotine reacts with ambient nitrous acid it forms carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines or TSNAs," says Hugo Destaillats of the Indoor Environment Department at Berkeley Lab. "TSNAs are among the most broadly acting and potent carcinogens present in unburned tobacco and tobacco smoke."
Basically it isn't enough to banish smokers to an outdoor area, there to suck and gasp on their burning sooty treats. As they do so, their clothes and skin will become coated with deadly nicotine, which will then react with nitrous acid floating inside a building - usually generated by "unvented gas appliances" or diesel engines, apparently - to form a slick of poisonous slime which they will drip everywhere in the style of giant, evil snails.
"Smoking outside is better than smoking indoors but nicotine residues will stick to a smoker's skin and clothing," says Lara Gundel of the Berkeley Lab. "Those residues follow a smoker back inside and get spread everywhere. The biggest risk is to young children. Dermal uptake of the nicotine through a child's skin is likely to occur when the smoker returns and if nitrous acid is in the air, which it usually is, then TSNAs will be formed."
And don't think you're getting away with the use of a so-called "electronic cigarette". These battery powered in-mouth devices vapourise a nicotine solution into a mist, allowing a hopeless drug-slave to get his or her fix without generating any first or second-hand smoke. But the nicotine fog, according to the Berkeley researchers, will still generate third-hand smoko-slime, and kill children by the score.
It seems that only "100 percent smoke free environments in public places" - presumably meaning not even outdoor smoking - can be acceptably healthy. In the case of buildings where "substantial smoking" has occurred in the past, the Berkeley profs recommend that the carpets, walls, furniture and ceilings be replaced.
There's more on the new discoveries here. ®
COMMENTS
Denormalise Denormalise
The concept of 3rd hand smoke did not exist until January last year. The whole concept was cooked up by the National Social Climate Survey of Tobacco Control, a special interest group working to legislate bans on tobacco (not surprisingly, heavily backed by the world’s largest pharmaceutical company of smoking cessation products) as part of its campaign to denormalise smoking.
Denormalise. For those who don’t know what is meant by “denormalise,” it is exactly what fat people are experiencing in increasing intensity, as well as all those with physical characteristics, cultural differences or chronic diseases (actually primarily due to aging and genes) that can be condemned for not following some certain diet and lifestyle behavior. Denormalising is a process of “stigmatizing people in everyday discourse and media representations, in a variety of overwhelmingly negative ways” to make them outcasts and create cultural change as a means for a nation to control behavior.
This technique of denormalising was described in detail by Simon Chapman, Ph.D., professor of public health at the University of Sydney, in the January 2008 issue of Tobacco Control, published by the British Medical Journal Publishing Group.
And remember the dose makes the poison, ie drinking one glass water/hour good, drinking 12 litres of water per hour bad.
Just because we can detect a few millipoofteenths of nicotine after a few years does not mean that those few millipoofteenths are dangerous
California BS
I'm an ex smoker and this is bullshit, you're not going to develop cancer because someone previously smoked a cigarette in the general area that you're standing in.
Anyone genuinely concerned about this should just give it up, go and live in a plastic bubble, drink distilled water and only breathe air that has gone through a series of military grade carbon filters, because you'll be exposed to far more toxins in your general environment everyday just by working in an office, walking by an inner city road or probably eating a kebab.
This is just more things on the list of stuff for the mincing, anti-smoker, crybaby to complain about.
Unvented
Surely the output of the unvented diesel engine I have in my living room will kill me long before I accidentally touch a nicotine-impregnated surface
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