Smoke Free Marin

Thirdhand Smoke Worries Researchers

University of California Newsroom

By Andy Evangelista

Researchers at the Berkeley Lab use this smoking machine to gauge how much nicotine from cigarette smoke is absorbed into drywall and other common surfaces.
After a cigarette is puffed and snuffed, it may leave much more than a stench.
UC researchers have found that the residue from tobacco smoke clings to furniture, clothes, rugs, walls and floors. It may linger there for months and then mix with common pollutants to form carcinogens and tiny particles that are potentially hazardous, particularly to children.
"There are many parents who smoke, and they do it in ways that they think protects their kids. They smoke only when the children are not present and open windows so that the smoke clears the room," said Hugo Destaillats, a chemist in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Indoor Environment Department. "But there really may be no safe way to smoke indoors."

While recent studies on the health dangers of cigarettes point to a new tobacco hazard from thirdhand smoke, more investigation is needed to find out whether the noxious remnants of extinguished cigarettes actually cause disease and kill like first- and secondhand smoke.

Firsthand smoke is inhaled by the actual smoker. Secondhand smoke, a combination of smoke from burning tobacco and that exhaled by the smoker, is breathed by another person. Thirdhand smoke, which sticks in rooms and cars, is often smelled but not seen.

"We are just beginning to learn about the dangers of toxins in thirdhand smoke and in identifying the public health risks from exposure to thirdhand smoke in homes, apartments, hotel rooms, casinos and motor vehicles where cigarette smoking occurs," said Kamlesh Asotra, research administrator at the UC Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program.

The program, which is funded by a California state cigarette tax, has launched a $3.75 million research initiative to concentrate on thirdhand smoke — its chemistry and molecular toxicology, for example — and find out how it may penetrate the body and affect health. The initiative, the first organized research effort to examine thirdhand smoke, also will fund studies on cigarette butts and how they can harm the environment.

Cigarettes butts are not just eyesores on beaches and sidewalks. Stan Glantz, a UCSF scientist who has been called the Ralph Nader of the anti-tobacco movement, describes them as "toxic waste pellets."

Full article from University of California Newsroom: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/24112