Daily Science Dose

That has to be one of the more literal titles I’ve used in a while…

Back in high school, I had a friend that smoked and lived with parents that smoked. She stank — so much so that my dad would ask her to remove her ubiquitous suede jacket (can’t fault her for being stylish) before coming into our house and leave it outside in the garage. I gave my dad sh*t about it, but secretly, I thanked him.

Seems Fritz was bringing in toxic substances with that coat — and probably her hair, her shirt, her shoes. Scientists are finally giving a name to that toxic residue from cigarettes.

Third-Hand Smoke

And it is just as dangerous as first- or second-hand smoke. That smell that lingers after your morning drag is toxic, and it clings to clothes, walls, furniture, carpets. The children that parents think they are protecting by not smoking around them may still be sucking on that cigarette when they crawl around the house, gum a toy, or sit in the car.

Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician who heads the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said the phrase third-hand smoke is a brand-new term that has implications for behavior.

“The central message here is that simply closing the kitchen door to take a smoke is not protecting the kids from the effects of that smoke,” he said. “There are carcinogens in this third-hand smoke, and they are a cancer risk for anybody of any age who comes into contact with them.” — NY Times

Researchers from Mass General’s Children’s Hospital did a phone survey to see how many people knew about the dangers of third-hand smoke and how they smoked around their kids.

“Everyone knows that second-hand smoke is bad, but they don’t know about this,” said Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

“When their kids are out of the house, they might smoke. Or they smoke in the car. Or they strap the kid in the car seat in the back and crack the window and smoke, and they think it’s okay because the second-hand smoke isn’t getting to their kids,” Dr. Winickoff continued. “We needed a term to describe these tobacco toxins that aren’t visible.”

Third-hand smoke is what one smells when a smoker gets in an elevator after going outside for a cigarette, he said, or in a hotel room where people were smoking. “Your nose isn’t lying,” he said. “The stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: ’Get away.’” — NY Times (again)

The study found that 65% of non-smokers and only 43% of smokers believed that “‘breathing air in a room today where people smoked yesterday can harm the health of infants and children.’” It’s scary that more than half of all smokers questioned didn’t think that cigarette residue would pose a health danger to their children. Children take in more air than adults, percentage-wise, and therefore usually feel the effects of environmental contaminants more profoundly.

And we wonder why so many kids have asthma?

Here’s a short list of the the many, many chemicals and toxic substances that can be found in cigarette residue.

Gee, and I was worried about flame retardants…

cigarettes, smoke, second-hand smoke, third-hand smoke, children, health, danger, toxic substances, arsenic, lead, carbon monoxide, butane, hydrogen cyanide, toulene, polonium-210, asthma, carcinogens, flame retardants, environmental contaminants