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Third-Hand Smoke Is a Liver Disease Foe
A cigarette’s harm goes beyond its associated clouds of smoke, especially for those with liver disease.
The health implications of cigarette smoking have been well-known now for several decades. Since it is breathed in and typically damages the lungs, inhaling cigarette smoke was previously thought to be the sole route for this habit’s destructive powers. However, scientists also recognize additional ways of absorbing cigarette’s toxic byproducts that raise a red flag for those with liver disease.
Research over the past ten years has proven that second-hand smoke (the smoke emanating from a lit cigarette and being exhaled from a smoker’s mouth) can be just as damaging as taking a cigarette to your own lips. Besides fostering asthma, respiratory disease and a wide range of cancers, evidence suggests that the tobacco industry poses an even greater peril to human health via third-hand smoke.
Who Is Affected Most?
Awareness of what constitutes third-hand smoke and how it endangers health is currently being directed towards infants and young children. However, those with liver disease are just as susceptible to the dangers of third-hand cigarette smoke. Due to their reduced capability of filtering toxins out of the body, third-hand smoke is a legitimate concern for those with chronic liver disease.
Children are naturally more vulnerable to poisonous compounds, because many of their body systems are still developing. In addition, infants and toddlers are more likely to have close contact with contaminated surfaces (carpet and bedding) and may put a variety of objects into their mouths. Adults with liver disease are also very sensitive to toxins. Because their livers often have less capability to metabolize poisonous substances, those with liver disease are likely to have detrimental toxins circulating for an extended period of time in their bloodstream.
What Is Third-Hand Smoke?
Harder to get rid of than simply opening a window or turning on a fan, third-hand smoke refers to the toxic gases and particles that cling to hair, clothing, mattresses, cushions and carpeting. Remaining long after second-hand smoke clears a room, third-hand smoke is the residue that includes heavy metals, carcinogens and radioactive materials. In their study focusing on the risk of cigarettes to infants and children, doctors from MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston coined the term “third-hand smoke” to describe these toxic chemicals.
Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff, the lead author of the MassGeneral study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School describes third-hand smoke as what one smells when a smoker gets in an elevator after going outside for a cigarette, or in a hotel room where smoking occurred previously. According to Winickoff, “Your nose isn’t lying. The stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you to get away.”
Although third-hand smoke is not visible as white or grayish hovering clouds, this toxic residue can still cause a host of human health problems. Three of the many substances in third-hand smoke that make it so dangerous are:
- Hydrogen Cyanide – Metabolized extensively in the liver, hydrogen cyanide was used as a weapon by the Germans in World War II. Used in chemical warfare, hydrogen cyanide can destroy cells because it actually interferes with the release of oxygen to tissues.
- Toluene – Also metabolized by the liver, this solvent is known to harm the central nervous system.
- Arsenic – Arsenic is a known poison; consuming or breathing in large quantities of arsenic can cause death. It is also a human carcinogen that has been shown to cause skin, lung, bladder, liver, kidney and prostate cancer.
The toxins in third-hand smoke can not only harm children, but it can also exacerbate liver disease. This realization emphasizes the importance of our sense of smell – and consciously avoiding people or locations where smoking has occurred. As awareness of third-hand smoke grows, legislation to protect children from its effects is sure to follow. Luckily, such laws will also benefit those who have fewer functioning liver cells. But don’t wait for lawmakers to restrict where smokers can light up, those concerned with protecting their liver from third-hand smoke should let their nose lead the way.
http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/text_version/chemicals.php?id=3, Arsenic, Retrieved September 3, 2009, National Library of Medicine, 2009.
http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/text_version/chemicals.php?id=30, Toluene, Retrieved September 2, 2009, National Library of Medicine, 2009.
http://www.epa.gov/iris/subst/0060.htm, Hydrogen cyanide (CASRN 74-90-8, Retrieved September 2, 2009, US Environmental Protection Agency, 2009.
http://www.idph.state.il.us/Bioterrorism/factsheets/cyanide.htm, Hydrogen Cyanide, Retrieved September 2, 2009, Illinois Department of Public Health, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/03/health/research/03smoke.html?_r=2, A New Cigarette Hazard: ”˜Third-Hand Smoke’, Roni Caryn Rabin, Retrieved September 2, 2009, The New York Times, January 2009.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081229105037.htm, Third-hand Smoke: Another Reason To Quit Smoking, Retrieved September 2, 2009, ScienceDaily LLC, December 2008.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-third-hand-smoke, What is third-hand smoke? Coco Ballantyne, Is it hazardous?, Retrieved September 2, 2009, Scientific American, January 2009.
About the Author
Nicole Cutler, L.Ac., MTCM is a long time advocate of integrating perspectives on health. With a Bachelor's degree in Neuroscience from the University of Rochester and a Master's degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine from Five Branches Institute, Nicole has been a licensed acupuncturist since 2000. She has gathered acupuncture licenses in the states of California and New York, is a certified specialist with the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association, has earned diplomat status with the National Commission of Chinese and Oriental Medicine in Acupuncture and Chinese Herbology and is a member of the Society for Integrative Oncology. In addition to her acupuncture practice that focuses on stress and pain relief, digestion, immunity and oncology, Nicole contributes to the integration of healthcare by writing articles for professional massage therapists and people living with liver disease.
If you’re afraid of second-hand smoke, you should also avoid cars, restaurants…and don’t even think of barbecuing.
here are just some of the chemicals present in tobacco smoke and what else contains them:
Arsenic, Benzine, Formaldehyde.
Arsenic- 8 glasses of water = 200 cigarettes worth of arsenic
Benzine- Grilling of one burger = 250 cigarettes
Formaldehyde – cooking a vegetarian meal = 100 cigarettes
When you drink your 8 glasses of tap water (64 ounces) a day, you’re safely drinking up to 18,000 ng of arsenic by government safety standards of 10 nanograms/gram (10 ng/gm = 18,000ng/64oz) for daily consumption.
Am I “poisoning” you with the arsenic from my cigarette smoke? Actually, with the average cigarette putting out 32 ng of arsenic into the air which is then diluted by normal room ventilation for an individual exposure of .032 ng/hour, you would have to hang out in a smoky bar for literally 660,000 hours every day (yeah, a bit hard, right?) to get the same dose of arsenic that the government tells you is safe to drink.
So you can see why claims that smokers are “poisoning” people are simply silly.
You can stay at home all day long if you don’t want all those “deadly†chemicals around you, but in fact, those alleged 4000-7000 theorized chemicals in cigarettes are present in many foods, paints etc. in much larger quantities. And as they are present in cigarettes in very small doses, they are harmless. Sorry, no matter how much you like the notion of harmful ETS, it’s a myth.
Barbecues poison the air with toxins and could cause cancer, research suggests.
A study by the French environmental campaigning group Robin des Bois found that a typical two-hour barbecue can release the same level of dioxins as up to 220,000 cigarettes.
Dioxins are a group of chemicals known to increase the likelihood of cancer.
The figures were based on grilling four large steaks, four turkey cuts and eight large sausages.â€
Barbecues poison the air with toxins and could cause cancer, research suggests.
A study by the French environmental campaigning group Robin des Bois found that a typical two-hour barbecue can release the same level of dioxins as up to 220,000 cigarettes.
Dioxins are a group of chemicals known to increase the likelihood of cancer.
The figures were based on grilling four large steaks, four turkey cuts and eight large sausages.â€
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3106039.stm
The thirdhand smoke scam
Now that the thirdhand smoke story has been reported around the globe, it’s
time to look at the study
which led to headlines such
as:
Third-hand smoke
causes cancer, study shows risks to babies and toddlers
This is not your average piece of epidemiological number-crunching. It
involved some real lab work which, when written down, is largely unintelligible
to the layman*. Journalists rarely bother to read scientific studies at the best
of times, but what chance do they have with paragraphs like this?
Laboratory experiments using cellulose as a model indoor material
yielded a > 10-fold increase of surface-bound TSNAs when sorbed secondhand
smoke was exposed to 60 ppbv HONO for 3 hours. In both cases we identified
1-(N-methyl-N-nitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridinyl)-4-butanal, a TSNA absent in freshly
emitted tobacco smoke, as the major product. The potent carcinogens
4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridinyl)-1-butanone and N-nitroso nornicotine were
also detected. Time-course measurements revealed fast TSNA formation, with up to
0.4% conversion of nicotine.
And that’s from the abstract – the bit that summarises the study for the
casual reader. So what does it actually say?
To put it in something close to simple terms, the experiment involved
putting nitrous acid (HONO) in contact with nicotine. The nicotine had been
absorbed into surfaces (hence ‘thirdhand smoke’). In the real-life experiment,
this surface was the glove compartment of a truck driven by a heavy smoker
(presumably the cabin of a truck was chosen because it is the smallest space a
smoker might work in). In the other experiments, they used cellulose
substrates.
The aim was to see if the reaction created tobacco-specific nitrosamines
(TSNAs), specifically NNK, NNA and NNN, some of which are believed to be
carcinogenic.
The scientists found no trace of NNN in any experiment. In the glove
compartment, they found levels of NNK that were barely above the detectable
level (less than 1 ngcm-2). Even in extreme experimental situations, in which
cellulose substrates were exposed to pure nicotine vapour, NNK levels failed to
reach 5 ngcm-2.
They found somewhat larger measurements of NNA (20 ngcm-2 in extreme
experimental conditions) but levels were much lower in the real-life conditions
of the truck (1 ngcm-2). This was all rather academic anyway because, as the
authors admit:
“NNA carcinogenicity has not been reported.”
In other words, the one TSNA they did manage to find in any quantity
doesn’t cause cancer.
There is nothing obviously wrong with the way the chemistry was done here.
The paper simply shows that nitrous acid (HONO) molecules will react with
absorbed nicotine (just as it would with free-floating nicotine) to produce
TSNAs. The more HONO in the room, and the more nicotine on the surface, the more
the reaction will occur (of course).
The problem (and it’s a big problem) is that mixing nitrous acid with
nicotine is an experiment with virtually no practical application. If your house
or car is full of nitrous acid then you have more to worry about than it
reacting with absorbed nicotine. As the authors point out near the top of the
2nd column, 1st page:
“The main indoor sources of HONO are direct emissions from unvented
combustion appliances, smoking, and surface conversion of NO2 and NO.”
NO2 and NO themselves are products of unregulated combustion. So you’ll
only be exposed to high concentrations of HONO if you’re exposed to the products
of combustion – ie. you’re a peasant in a smoke-filled hut, you live in a very
polluted city like New Delhi, or you are in fact smoking a cigarette. The
combustion products themselves are carcinogens, and are present in much higher
concentrations than the TSNAs. Any surface reaction is negligible. Your problem
is the nitrous acid, not the TSNAs.
Is this kind of surface reaction likely to take place in the home? Not at
all. Nitrous acid concentrations in the average Californian home
are 4.6 parts per billion (ppb). This is 14 times lower than the 65 ppb
concentrations used in this experiment (which indirectly compares with EPA limits for NO2 of 53 ppb).
The chances of HONO and nicotine reacting to create detectable, let alone
harmful, concentrations of TSNAs outside of a laboratory experiment are
zilch.
In summary:
The researchers used concentrations of nitrous acid 14 times higher than
would be found in a normal environment
Even at the unrealistic levels found in the experiment, there is no evidence
that such doses are harmful to humans
The main TSNA produced is not a carcinogen
The weakest results were found in the real-life conditions, with
measurements barely exceeding detectable levels in the smallest conceivable
workplace of a heavy smoker
Any effect from the TSNAs is negligible compared to the effects of the
nitrous acid itself
* And I thank my
bio-chemist friend JPM for his
BS Alert: The ‘third-hand smoke’ hoax
What’s that you say? You’ve never even heard of the horrors of “third-hand smoke?†Well, we here at the Louisville Public Policy Examiner like to keep our readers on the cutting edge of pseudoscience, so that they may demonstrate their newly-acquired erudition at Sierra Club meetings and Metro Health Department seminars. Worse than DDT, Radon, and Trans-Fats combined, third-hand smoke—or, THS—may well prove to be the greatest scientific scare of the century. Not since the Great Cranberry Scare of 1959 has junk science been ratcheted up to such a hysterical level.
It all started in January of 2009, with a silly little article in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. A consumer telephone poll about beliefs surrounding the health risks of smoking, that had been conducted in 2005, had asked 1,500 people if they agreed with the statements:
“Breathing air in a car today where people smoked yesterday can harm the health of babies and children.â€
“Breathing air in a room where people smoked yesterday can harm the health of babies and children.â€
Those surveyed who stated they agreed or agreed strongly were categorized as believing third-hand smoke harmed the health of babies and children. Predictably, respondents who self-identified themselves as smokers, tended to minimize any perceived harm; while non-smokers were more likely to assume some harm from THS. Only 65 percent of nonsmokers and 43 percent of smokers agreed with the statements, which researchers interpreted as acknowledgement of the risks of third-hand smoke.
The survey results were cited in the article as “evidence†that third-hand smoke had been “identified as a health danger.†This article in Pediatrics was not a clinical study, so it provided no original research that THS is an actual medical or scientific observable or definable entity, or that it has ever been shown to harm babies or children… or how such a thing might scientifically even be plausible.
Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff (pronounced “when-I-cough;†that’s really his name), the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, said in the Pediatrics article:
Everyone knows that second-hand smoke is bad, but they don’t know about this. We needed a term to describe these tobacco toxins that aren’t visible. Third-hand smoke is what one smells when a smoker gets in an elevator after going outside for a cigarette, or in a hotel room where people were smoking. Your nose isn’t lying, the stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: ’Get away.’
So, the clever wordsmith Dr. Winickoff sent press releases around to the usual suspects in the leftist press, and soon got a bite from Roni Rabin at the New York Times, who wrote a perfectly outrageous article titled, A New Cigarette Hazard: ‘Third-Hand Smoke.’
Rabin talks about “…the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing, not to mention cushions and carpeting, that lingers long after second-hand smoke has cleared from a room. The residue includes heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials that young children can get on their hands and ingest, especially if they’re crawling or playing on the floor.†Mercy me! Those poor little tykes crawling about in all those carcinogens and radioactive materials! The horror!
Then, Ms. Rabin really jumps the shark: “Among the substances in third-hand smoke are hydrogen cyanide, used in chemical weapons; butane, which is used in lighter fluid; toluene, found in paint thinners; arsenic; lead; carbon monoxide; and even Polonium-210, the highly radioactive carcinogen that was used to murder former Russian spy Alexander V. Litvinenko in 2006. Eleven of the compounds are highly carcinogenic.â€
For our Physics-challenged readers, we need to remind you that Polonium is a radioactive element discovered by Marie Curie and Pierre Curie in 1898 that is naturally occurring and widely distributed in small amounts across the earth’s crust. Your average diet naturally includes 1 to 10 picocuries (billionth of a curie) of Polonium-210 a day. Most (50-90%) leaves the body promptly in our stool and the rest decreases in our body with a half-time of 50 days. A smoker who smokes a pack of 20 cigarettes a day takes in about 0.72 picocuries of Polonium-210.
To put these numbers into perspective, that Russian spy, Litvinenko, is believed to have been exposed to 5,000,000,000 picocuries (5 millicuries). As is the fundamental principle of toxicology, the dose makes the poison. Ms. Rabin chose to make a lurid reference to Polonium-210 in a yellow-journalistic attempt to scare the hell out of her readers and start the junk-science ball rolling.
And roll it did. Within months, the neologism “third-hand smoke†was getting more than 3 million references in a Google search. (Interestingly, the term “fourth-hand smokeâ€â€”the theory that you can get cancer from simply watching a movie in which Humphrey Bogart is smoking—is now getting 56,600 Google references. Stay tuned.)
By the way, if you’re still worried that Junior’s crawling about in all that THS left in the living room from Uncle Albert’s pipe smoking will render him unto the same fate as the late Russian spy, you need to check out Michael J. McFadden’s computations in Reason Magazine:
It would take one quadrillion days (2.74 trillion years) for that child to absorb 5 millicuries. Unfortunately the universe is only 10 billion years old, so the child would have to lick floors for 274 cycles of our expanding universe to match our radioactive Russian. Of course since he’d normally excrete most of that polonium we’d have to refuse to change his diaper until the end of that period… not a very pleasant thought. And then there’s that whole annoying fact that polonium’s half-life is only 138 days, so we’d just have to ignore the laws of physics as well in order to justify the story’s thesis…
Money-hungry “scientists†across the land were quick to spot THS as a possible research goldmine. Dr. Hugo Destaillats, a chemist with the Indoor Environment Department of Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division, recently came out with a marvelous little “study,†published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), in which he reports:
The burning of tobacco releases nicotine in the form of a vapor that adsorbs strongly onto indoor surfaces, such as walls, floors, carpeting, drapes and furniture. Nicotine can persist on those materials for days, weeks and even months. Our study shows that when this residual nicotine reacts with nitrous acid it forms carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines or TSNAs.
Now, Dr. Hugo is not a medical doctor; he’s an Assistant Research Professor at Arizona State University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His CV lists a Ph.D. in Chemistry (1998), from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina. His “study†did not involve any clinical trials with actual human beings (or even actual mice or rats). He and his student assistants simply applied tobacco smoke to sheets of cellulose as a model indoor material, and determined that TSNAs detected on cellulose surfaces were 10 times higher than those originally present in the sample. That is, after spraying the cellulose sheets with nitrous acid.
In the PNAS paper, Dr. Hugo suggests various ways to limit the impact of the third hand smoke health hazard, including, replacing nicotine-laden furnishings, carpets and wallboard. Presumably, this simple—albeit pricey—technique will also eradicate all residue and vestiges of Radon and Trans-Fats also. Unanswered, of course, is the question of whether you could have equal success in reducing TSNAs on your rugs and furniture by just refraining from spraying everything with nitrous acid in the first place.
(Illustration: Dr. Hugo Destaillats)
Before you jump to the conclusion that Dr. Hugo is some sort of moron, you need to know about California’s Proposition 99. In November 1988, California voters approved Prop. 99, “The Tobacco Tax and Health Protection Actâ€, which instituted a 25¢-per-pack cigarette surtax. Part of this tax revenue is deposited into a Research Account, to be appropriated for research on tobacco-related disease, by the TRDRP. For the bizarre little study we have outlined above, Dr. Hugo Destaillats was awarded $704,901.00 by TRDRP and the taxpaying smokers of California. Maybe Dr. Hugo’s not such a moron after all.
By the way, if you thought we just made up that reference to Humphrey Bogart a few paragraphs back, you need to check out Dr. Hugo’s research monograph: Indoor fate and transport of secondhand tobacco smoke. The Bogart photo you see above was lifted from that article.
God help us if the Louisville Metro Council finds out about THS. The city will never find enough landfill space for all those miles of carpet, wallboard, and tons of furnishings to be discarded when the Council bans THS. And Uncle Albert’s cardigan smoking sweater will have to be buried somewhere in the Yucca Mountains; encased in concrete. To protect future generations, you see.
This pretty well destroys the Myth of second hand smoke:
Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds.
By JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News.
Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.
What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already know: For some patients on a crowded organ waiting list, lungs from smokers are better than none.
“I think people are grateful just to have a shot at getting lungs,†said Dr. Sharven Taghavi, a cardiovascular surgical resident at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, who led the new study………………………
Ive done the math here and this is how it works out with second ahnd smoke and people inhaling it!
The 16 cities study conducted by the U.S. DEPT OF ENERGY and later by Oakridge National laboratories discovered:
Cigarette smoke, bartenders annual exposure to smoke rises, at most, to the equivalent of 6 cigarettes/year.
146,000 CIGARETTES SMOKED IN 20 YEARS AT 1 PACK A DAY.
A bartender would have to work in second hand smoke for 2433 years to get an equivalent dose.
Then the average non-smoker in a ventilated restaurant for an hour would have to go back and forth each day for 119,000 years to get an equivalent 20 years of smoking a pack a day! Pretty well impossible ehh!
It would appear the Liver non-profit is out to cash in on a anti-tobacco grant for some extra funding. But to go and destroy your reputations by even considering the junkiest of all the anti-smoking mythologies is beyond Insanity. You folks should have went to RJR Im sure theyd have donated with no loss of your precious reputation.
so does this mean I have to avoid my boyfriend since he smokes?
Hogwash!
Let’s put yet another level of smoker-fear out there…3rd Hand Smoke my a$$!
But, let’s NOT tell what common every day, worldly items contain these so called “poisons”, and ONLY say they are there, sitting on the furniture for a young child to lick-up because of cigarettes!
Here’s some TRUTH which was purposefully omitted from this dimwitted writer’s article:
1)Hydrogen cyanide is contained in the exhaust of vehicles, in tobacco and wood smoke.
2)Toluene is a common solvent, e.g. for paints, paint thinners, silicone sealants, many chemical reactants, rubber,printing ink, adhesives (glues), lacquers, leather tanners, and disinfectants. (Oh wait…could it be the disinfectant used to clean up the bad-bad-bad cigarette 3rd hand smoke left this toxin behind….nah). Curiously, this chemical is NOT found in cigarettes.
3) Arsenic makes up about 1.5 ppm (0.00015%) of the Earth’s crust, making it the 53rd most abundant element. Soil contains 1–10 ppm of arsenic. Arsenic also occurs in various organic forms in the environment. Lead components in car batteries are strengthened by the presence of a very small percentage of arsenic. It is also found in food, water, soil, and air. Arsenic is absorbed by all plants, but is more concentrated in leafy vegetables, rice, apple and grape juice, and seafood. Again, NOT found in cigarettes….oh, and arsenic is found in your child’s apple juice and rice products. The sample found in this article (if there was really any actual testing done) was probably from what the baby spit-up, on the couch the day earlier!
It doesn’t get any more stupid, silly, ridiculous, hysterical (add your own adjectives) as this. Good grief, do these people ever think twice about what they spew? And the authors of articles that repeat and perpetrate these absurdities are no better.