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More health risks from smoking
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Posted on 02/09/2010 12:29:07 AM PST by neverdem
Nicotine residues on indoor surfaces can react with ambient gases to generate cancer-causing compounds, researchers in the US have found. The research is hoped to shed new light on the possible danger of 'third-hand smoke' - where toxins from tobacco fumes can linger on household surfaces.
'Certain compounds - such as ambient nitrous acid, nitrogen dioxide or ozone - are present in higher quantities indoors rather than outdoors,' explains Hugo Destaillats, who led the research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, US. This is because they are generated by combustion from indoor gas supplies, fireplaces or the use of electronic equipment.
Destaillats and his team used cellulose as a model indoor material, and placed a block of it inside a truck belonging to a smoker for three days. They then analysed the block and compared the results with lab-based tests based on cellulose exposed to vaporised nicotine in a tubular-flow reactor. 'We found that ambient gases [in the truck] reacted with residual nicotine to generate tobacco-specific nitrosamines that are known to be carcinogenic.'
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More health risks from smoking
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Two of the compounds - N-nitroso nornicotine (NNN) and 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridil)-1-butanone (NNK) are also found in tobacco smoke, so have been well-studied in the past. But a third compound was identified that is not usually present in tobacco smoke: 1-(N-methyl-N-nitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridinyl)-4-butanal), termed NNA. Since it is absent from smoke, NNA has not been investigated in detail, but the team is hopeful that toxicologists will now undertake studies.
Unlike second-hand smoke, inhaled unintentionally in public places, the hazards of third-hand smoke are not so clear-cut. Many factors are involved, from size and ventilation of the indoor environment to the different materials used - microlayers of toxins can accumulate in upholstery, wallpaper, clothing and hair.
'One group that is particularly at risk from this type of smoke are children,' says Jonathan Winickoff, an assistant professor of paediatrics who has studied the danger of third-hand smoke at Harvard Medical School. 'Children interact with their environment in a very different way, so their exposure could be twenty times higher than adults.'
'I think this is important work that will set the stage for many further studies on residual tobacco smoke contamination,' Winickoff adds. 'The implication of third-hand smoke is that there is no way for a person to smoke indoors without contaminating that environment.'
Ban tobacco, nitrogen and oxidation! That'll learn them.
You don’t even want to know what 4th hand smoke is.
Hasn’t this horse already been beaten to death?? And tarred and quartered??
Wonder how long before the antismokers show up on this thread.
“You don’t even want to know what 4th hand smoke is.”
Is it looking at a cigarette cross-eyed?
I need them to start work against dust.
“Unlike second-hand smoke, inhaled unintentionally in public places, the hazards of third-hand smoke are not so clear-cut.”
hmm
Third hand smoke? LOL mkay whatever.
I just bought a house, cheap, that had been heavily smoked in. After a wash and paint, it still smells. Apparently, much of what I had washed was the actual Nicotine. Nasty stuff, if you dont keep a clean house (previous owners were pigs, with all due respect to pigs.) This article gives me cause for concern. I think I may rent an Ozone generator and try that.
Was thinking the same thing. . .How many 'ratchets' up will we go.
Am sick of the stats; the warnings of just about everything our Gov promotes in the negative; and of course, we know, like so many things the Gov takes on - on our behalf - there is an Agenda/money tied into the numbers and the conclusions drawn.
Am not a smoker and think there is No question that smoking is hazardous to one's health; that it can be a deadly engagement. But it is 'still' a legal activity. Beyond that; believe little; if anything, unfortunately that these people come forth with. They are reaching beyond the pale. . .but they do need to earn a living. ..and they need a premise on which to prove they deserve those grants. . .
Hazards: A Warning on Mixing Herbs and Medicine
Mediterranean diet may lower risk of brain damage that causes thinking problems
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
And they always conveniently fail to mention that lung cancer is the number one cancer killer worldwide - amongst smokers AND NONSMOKERS!!!
AND NONSMOKERS!!!
Get that? People who NEVER SMOKE GET LUNG CANCER!!!
Ah, this must be another study from the Institute of Scientists Who Ate Chips of Leaded Paint As Children.
Nanny State Pingaroonie!
You KNOW it’s charlatanism when the phrase :’One group that is particularly at risk from this type of smoke are children’ is in the FIRST press release on the subject.
We are all gonna DIE!
brought to you by a compendium of previously unemployed Climatologists who after they were canned for fudging the Global warming results found the new thing to latch on to, too justify their existence
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