Third-hand smoke

April 4th, 2009, Author: admin, Categories: General information on tobacco, nicotine, marijuana, Stop smoking medication

Original article on Tobacco facts
Another issue that is currently raising eyebrows is the concept of “third-hand” smoke. This refers to the particles of smoke that linger on smokers’ clothes, hair and the carpets and furniture of a room for days, “outgassing” toxic vapours. Young children may be at particular risk, since they could ingest the residue while crawling around or mouthing their toys.
The first signs that third-hand smoke may be a danger emerged in 2004. A study showed that even if parents only smoke outside the home, detectable levels of cotinine – a metabolite of nicotine – were present in their children’s urine.
Levels were much lower if the parents only smoked outside the house: 2.32 nanograms per millilitre compared with 15.57 from secondhand smoke. Still, some researchers think even this low level could be enough to cause harm, particularly to a child’s developing brain. “My sense is that these levels are high enough to be concerning,” says Kimberly Yolton, a psychologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio, who has previously shown that exposure to nicotine from secondhand smoke seems to slightly depress a child’s school results.
As yet there is no consensus on whether the cotinine levels are high enough to have any meaningful effect. “We’ll need a lot more evidence before we act on this,” says Martin Dockrell of Action on Smoking and Health in London.