Years ago, before our recent smoking ban, while living in a home where smoking was not permitted, and being a non-smoker myself, I was often puzzled and disturbed to find my small closet reeking of tobacco smoke which had somehow come home on my clothes after a night out with smokers. What amazed me was how long the smell persisted, even on my undershirts, which after all were not directly exposed to the smokey air. Recently these smelly and once mysterious tobacco by- products have been identified and termed "third-hand-smoke".
The most compelling example of what "third-hand-smoke" looked and smelled like occurred quite a fwq years ago when a close friend (and a heavy smoker) on hearing that our TV had met its planned obsolescence date and had been carted off to the land fill (no recycling in those days), he kindly offered our growing family a still-good and functioning replacement TV. I eagerly accepted the offer of the more up-to-date-and working model for my children, who were then in the "Sesame Street" stage. My friend, who was fastidious about his home, neatly wound up the TV's electrical cord, scrubbed the exterior and even "Windexed" the glass screen, before he placed it in a nice cardboard box. That night, we unpacked what looked like an almost new set. I plugged it in and turned it on. Almost immediately our noses and throats were accosted by the odor of rancid tobacco products which seemed to emanate from the air vents in back of the TV. In a matter of minutes, the whole room reeked. The odors recalled the stale tobacco scents of the house of my friend and his good wife, though kind and generous, they were inveterate smokers and their home always smelled keenly of their habit.
Attempting to localize these odors, I approached the TV and peered into the interior through the rear air vents with the aid of a flashlight. The sets interior was coated with brown tobacco tar. On some parts the gooey substance had accumulated to a such a level that the materials dripped along some of the warm component parts to accumulate in small drops on the aluminum frame. The sight created a palpable vision of what my friends lungs and nasal passages might look like. Apparently as my friends smoked and watched TV over many hours the polluted air circulated continually through the warmed TV where smoke by-products settled out and adhered to the appliance's interior. I'm sure that their smoke-dulled nasal passages were unable to detect the smell, (or they wouldn't have offered it to me) but it was surely there for non-smokers to detect.
There was no cleaning it. So I quietly packed it up again, sealed the box and brought it out into the farm shed where it remained in quarantine.
"Everyone knows that second-hand smoke is bad, but they don't know about this," said Dr. Johnathan Winikoff, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard University Medical School and lead author of a study that focused on the effects of smoke-derived chemical residues clinging to clothes, hair, furniture and carpeting (as well as my friends TV). These materials linger on long after "second hand smoke" has been cleared from the air. It was Winikoff and his co-authors from Mass Genera Hospital for Children who termed these residues "third-hand-smoke". The study was published in this month's Journal of Pediatrics. See New York Times article from which this is summarized at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/03/health/research/03smoke.html?_r=1&em.
The NY Times piece by Roni Rabin (January 2, 2009) also goes on to reveal that according to their results most parents are unaware of the insidious threat of these residues to their children's health who may come in contact with these substances in contaminated rooms by touching surfaces, getting the materials on their skin, or ingesting them after they touched contaminated surfaces. The chemical residues are a frightening brew of solids, liquids and mucilaginous tars which may act to bind the solids including particles of carbon, lead, arsenic and other heavy metals (even tiny bits of deadly polonium 210) and dissolve a dangerous mix organic solvents produced by tobacco combustion such as toluene and butane. Alone eleven of the known component identified in third-hand-smoke are known to be highly carcinogenic. Their combined synergistic and additive effects are hard to evaluate but in combination any carcinogenic properties are probably enhanced.
The problem, underscored by the study, which evaluated attitudes toward smoking in 1,500 households nationwide in 2005, is that people are well aware of the threat of second hand smoke but less than half of smokers acknowledged the threat of smoking residues on surfaces in their homes and cars or in place they might visit . The authors conclude that third hand smoke is a likely threat to many of our nation's children who live in homes with smoking parents. Furthermore, the authors suggest that a better understanding of this threat may encourage parents to enforce a strict smoking ban at home.
So if you would like to see what concentrated "third hand smoke" really looks like, peek inside the TV of a heavy smoker.
The most compelling example of what "third-hand-smoke" looked and smelled like occurred quite a fwq years ago when a close friend (and a heavy smoker) on hearing that our TV had met its planned obsolescence date and had been carted off to the land fill (no recycling in those days), he kindly offered our growing family a still-good and functioning replacement TV. I eagerly accepted the offer of the more up-to-date-and working model for my children, who were then in the "Sesame Street" stage. My friend, who was fastidious about his home, neatly wound up the TV's electrical cord, scrubbed the exterior and even "Windexed" the glass screen, before he placed it in a nice cardboard box. That night, we unpacked what looked like an almost new set. I plugged it in and turned it on. Almost immediately our noses and throats were accosted by the odor of rancid tobacco products which seemed to emanate from the air vents in back of the TV. In a matter of minutes, the whole room reeked. The odors recalled the stale tobacco scents of the house of my friend and his good wife, though kind and generous, they were inveterate smokers and their home always smelled keenly of their habit.
Attempting to localize these odors, I approached the TV and peered into the interior through the rear air vents with the aid of a flashlight. The sets interior was coated with brown tobacco tar. On some parts the gooey substance had accumulated to a such a level that the materials dripped along some of the warm component parts to accumulate in small drops on the aluminum frame. The sight created a palpable vision of what my friends lungs and nasal passages might look like. Apparently as my friends smoked and watched TV over many hours the polluted air circulated continually through the warmed TV where smoke by-products settled out and adhered to the appliance's interior. I'm sure that their smoke-dulled nasal passages were unable to detect the smell, (or they wouldn't have offered it to me) but it was surely there for non-smokers to detect.
There was no cleaning it. So I quietly packed it up again, sealed the box and brought it out into the farm shed where it remained in quarantine.
"Everyone knows that second-hand smoke is bad, but they don't know about this," said Dr. Johnathan Winikoff, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard University Medical School and lead author of a study that focused on the effects of smoke-derived chemical residues clinging to clothes, hair, furniture and carpeting (as well as my friends TV). These materials linger on long after "second hand smoke" has been cleared from the air. It was Winikoff and his co-authors from Mass Genera Hospital for Children who termed these residues "third-hand-smoke". The study was published in this month's Journal of Pediatrics. See New York Times article from which this is summarized at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/03/health/research/03smoke.html?_r=1&em.
The NY Times piece by Roni Rabin (January 2, 2009) also goes on to reveal that according to their results most parents are unaware of the insidious threat of these residues to their children's health who may come in contact with these substances in contaminated rooms by touching surfaces, getting the materials on their skin, or ingesting them after they touched contaminated surfaces. The chemical residues are a frightening brew of solids, liquids and mucilaginous tars which may act to bind the solids including particles of carbon, lead, arsenic and other heavy metals (even tiny bits of deadly polonium 210) and dissolve a dangerous mix organic solvents produced by tobacco combustion such as toluene and butane. Alone eleven of the known component identified in third-hand-smoke are known to be highly carcinogenic. Their combined synergistic and additive effects are hard to evaluate but in combination any carcinogenic properties are probably enhanced.
The problem, underscored by the study, which evaluated attitudes toward smoking in 1,500 households nationwide in 2005, is that people are well aware of the threat of second hand smoke but less than half of smokers acknowledged the threat of smoking residues on surfaces in their homes and cars or in place they might visit . The authors conclude that third hand smoke is a likely threat to many of our nation's children who live in homes with smoking parents. Furthermore, the authors suggest that a better understanding of this threat may encourage parents to enforce a strict smoking ban at home.
So if you would like to see what concentrated "third hand smoke" really looks like, peek inside the TV of a heavy smoker.
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