What is Third-Hand Smoke? Should a Smoking Parent Be Concerned?

In 1964, the United States Surgeon General warned about the link between smoking, lung cancer, and heart disease. Parents smoked around their children, figuring the only person harmed by the smoke was the smoker himself. In 1986, the Surgeon General's Report on Involuntary Smoking, or secondhand smoke, was released. Parents began to confine their smoking to times when they were not in the same room as the baby. I was one of those parents. Before attending to my daughter's needs, I would finish and extinguish my cigarette. I never smoked and breastfed at the same time, thinking I was protecting our baby from the worst of the smoke.

A report released in January by researchers at MassGeneral Hospital for Children in the magazine Pediatrics and summarized in Science Daily suggests a need for increased public awareness over third-hand smoke and its effects on young children. Third-hand smoke has been a concern since the first research into the subject done at San Diego State University in 2004.

What Is Third-Hand Smoke?

Third-hand smoke is the particulates and gases which settle on any surface where a person is smoking. These gases and particulates include nicotine, cotinine (a byproduct of nicotine), arsenic, cadmium, lead, and ammonia, besides 244 other toxic substances. The surfaces a smoker's exhalations may settle upon include the smoker's skin, clothing, upholstery of vehicles and furniture, and any surface in the smoking environment including carpet, curtains, and wallpaper. Particulates and gases may travel beyond the room in which the person confines his smoking through the ventilation system and air currents of the building.

When I was trying to quit smoking, my husband could immediately tell from the smell on my clothes when I had sneaked a smoke, even if I stood outside on a windy day to do it. Our clothing, bedding, and the mobile home itself retained the smell for months after I finally quit. Our daughter was three years old at the time. Our home had six years' worth of cigarette gases and particulates absorbed into its paneling, carpet, and furnishings.

Should Parents Be Concerned?

Of the 250 gases and particulates in cigarette smoke, eleven are labeled Class 1 carcinogens. These eleven are among those deposited upon the smoker and the surfaces of the environment in which he smokes.

The San Diego researchers back in 2004 discovered cotinine present in the urine and hair shafts of 49 infants thirteen months old and younger whose parents smoked. This was a level fifty times that found in the infants of non-smokers. Even the infants of smokers who confined their activity to the outdoors had cotinine levels seven times higher than the babies of non-smokers. The head researcher, Professor Georg Matt, admitted more extensive studies should be conducted to prove any harm to children in households with third-hand smoke where a parent smoked indoors or had smoking particulates on his clothing from smoking outside.

There are difficulties in establishing solid links between third-hand smoke and the presence of cigarette particulates and gases in the urine, blood, and other fluid samples of babies exposed to it. In many cases, the parents smoked before the baby was born and the baby could have been exposed in utero. The amount of smoking done in the home while the baby is not present affects levels of accumulated particulates and gases. So does the amount of room ventilation. A study to definitively prove third-hand smoke to be harmful to young children must consider the effects of many variables on the study results.

I had three more children in the ten years after I quit smoking. In the sixth year after I quit, we moved from the mobile home into an older pre-owned house. Our oldest child suffers from sleep apnea. A two-month-old sibling died from SIDS within two weeks after we moved into the house. Whether the sleep apnea or the SIDS death was related to my smoking habit and the mobile home in which I smoked is difficult to conclude for sure.

Children are much more easily affected than adults by many environmental hazards including carbon monoxide from inadequate ventilation, lead poisoning from plumbing, and mercury from fish. While third-hand smoke may not be conclusively proven a hazard, the least a parent can do is to shield their children from long term exposure to second-hand smoke and carefully watch the studies about third-hand smoke.

Resources:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/123/1/e74 -the Pediatrics journal article in question

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1253717 the study cited in the Pediatrics journal article