Third hand smoke

Oh my word, another scare for us all to cry ourselves to sleep over. Third hand smoke.

So we know what cigarette smoke is, that's the stuff we actually smoke for. We also know what second hand smoke is: that's the wisps to fugs of other people's smoke which leads to passive smoking. That passive smoking the dangers of which everyone so overplays.

Third hand smoke is even better though: it lasts far longer than smoke or second hand smoke and yes, it's a danger to the kiddies as well! Now we can ban all smoking forever!

Parents who smoke often open a window or turn on a fan to clear the air for their children, but experts now have identified a related threat to children’s health that isn’t as easy to get rid of: third-hand smoke.

That’s the term being used to describe the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing, not to mention cushions and carpeting, that lingers long after second-hand smoke has cleared from a room. The residue includes heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials that young children can get on their hands and ingest, especially if they’re crawling or playing on the floor.

Doctors from MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston coined the term “third-hand smoke” to describe these chemicals in a new study that focused on the risks they pose to infants and children. The study was published in this month’s issue of the journal Pediatrics.

“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.

Well, you know, everything is bad at least some of the time. As we all know, the dose is the poison. So how bad is this third hand smoke?

A recent study in the journal Pediatrics notes: "Children are especially susceptible to thirdhand smoke exposure because they breathe near, crawl and play on, touch and mouth contaminated surfaces.".......Africk emphasized that the Pediatrics study did not call for legislation that would ban smoking in private homes.

Instead, he said: "We think this is a reminder to parents—smokers and non-smokers alike—that if they allow smoking in the home, it's going to hurt their children."

Yes, but how much is it going to hurt their children? Any more tyhan having a pair of hysterics as parents for example? We go any data on relative risks or anything?

Particulate matter from tobacco smoke has been proven toxic. According to the National Toxicology Program, these 250 poisonous gases, chemicals, and metals include hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, butane, ammonia, toluene (found in paint thinners), arsenic, lead, chromium (used to make steel), cadmium (used to make batteries), and polonium-210 (highly radioactive carcinogen). Eleven of the compounds are classified as Group 1 carcinogens, the most dangerous.

Sounds really bad....but what are the quantities of these? What's the dose?

"The dangers of third-hand smoke are very real," says Winickoff, who is a professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Richmond Center. "Our goal was to find out if people who were aware of these harmful effects were less likely to smoke inside of their home."

Winickoff's team found that this was the case. In a survey of more than 1,500 households, 95.4 percent of nonsmokers versus 84.1 percent of smokers agreed that second-hand smoke harms the health of children, and 65.2 percent of nonsmokers versus 43.3 percent of smokers believed that third-hand smoke harms children. Strict rules prohibiting smoke in the home were more prevalent among nonsmokers – 88.4 percent versus 26.7 percent – but among both smokers and non-smokers, participants who agreed that environmental smoke was harmful to children's health were more likely to have restrictions on smoking in their homes.

Oh, umm, this study wasn't in fact about how bad third hand smoke is at all. It's about how many people think that it's bad. And we've still no data at all on just how bad third hand smoke is. Oh, what's this?

." Winickoff notes that nursing a baby if you're a smoker is still preferable to bottle-feeding, however.

Err, right. Third hand smoke is less dangerous than bottle feeding your baby.

I think we'll put that down as not very dangerous at all then, shall we?