Parents and carers who smoke could be subjecting their children to the dangers of ‘third-hand smoke’. Scientists have discovered that tobacco smoke can leave residues on everyday surfaces which can react with air indoors to create potent cancer-causing chemicals.
Children and especially toddlers are then exposed to the chemicals that cling to the clothes, hair, cars and furniture of smokers. In tests, surfaces contaminated with cigarette smoke were shown to contain the chemical tobacco-specific nitrosamines, also known as TSNAs.
The scientists say that toxic particles from cigarette smoke can linger on surfaces a long time after the cigarette has been stubbed out. Children are at greater risk from the particles because being lower down, they are in closer proximity to them, not to mention likely to lick or suck the surfaces.
Researcher Lara Gundel , from the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, said that the residue even from smoking outside follows smokers back indoors and will stick to their hair and clothing. She warned that when the smoker returned and if their was nitrous oxide in the air (the same gas emited from car exhausts) then TSNAs would form.
Smoking lobby group Forest however remain sceptical about the findings, questioning whether the there was any evidence that the low levels of TSNAs were harmful. Simon Clark, director of the group, said, “The real danger is not third-hand smoke but propaganda dressed up as science”. Slightly less creditably, he suggested that scientists and campaigners should stop telling smokers how to live their lives until ‘the evidence of harm is irrefutable’. (I think by now, refuting the evidence is pretty much impossible, actually).
Cancer Research UK were more positive about the research, calling it an ‘interesting’ study that adds the possibility of an extra level of harm from cigarette smoke.