The dangers of smoking and secondhand smoking are well known - but now the dangers of thirdhand smoking have been revealed. Thirdhand smoke forms when particles from a cigarette seep into materials like hair, clothes and furniture and carpets.
And Mail Online reports that in one study non-smokers had up to 86 times higher levels of toxic compounds known as NNK and NNN in their urine after wearing the clothes of a heavy cigarette user for three hours. In another study, researchers at the Berkeley Lab in California exposed the same carcinogens to human lung tissue and showed they can cause DNA damage - one of the triggers of cancer.
Secondhand smoking, when exhaled fumes or the smoke from the end of a cigarette is breathed in by someone else, is thought to increase the risk of lung cancer in non-smokers by 20% to 30%. Less is known about the dangers of thirdhand smoke, with fewer studies conducted in the area.
Lead author Dr Xiaochen Tang, a researcher at the Berkeley Lab, said: "Nicotine is released in large amounts during smoking, and it coats all indoor surfaces, including human skin."
Author Professor Neal Benowitz, a medic at the University of California, San Francisco, said: "These findings illustrate the potential health impacts of thirdhand smoke, which contains not only TSNAs (tobacco-specific nitrosamines) but hundreds of other chemicals, some of which are also known carcinogens.
'Next steps for this research will explore in more detail the mechanisms of adverse health effects associated with tobacco and cannabis residues, effective remediation strategies, and translation of scientific findings to tobacco control practice."
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