We all know that smoking is noxious for our health. The habit kills about 440,000 people a year. Most of them die from lung cancer but smokers are also susceptible to cancers of the stomach, larynx, mouth and pharynx, esophagus, pancreas, bladder and kidney. We shall not forget about heart disease, which also has as main factor smoking.

 

Recent studies have also linked second-hand smoking to serious conditions, some of them even fatal such as lung cancer. Is there something else more serious than this?

 

Apparently, yes, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics. The phenomenon is called third-hand smoking. What exactly is third-hand smoking?

The term belongs to Dr. Joan Friebely, a doctor at Boston’s MassGeneral Hospital for Children and a co-author of the study and describes the toxins that cling to smokers’ hair, clothing, furniture, curtains or other surfaces.

 

“This is the first scientific study to use the term,” says Dr. Jonathan Winickoff, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

 

The study found that third-hand smoke containing heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials lingers long after second-hand smoke has dissipated, and can be ingested by children crawling around a room. After surveying 1,500 US households to look at people’s attitudes about third-hand smoke, the researchers found only 65 percent of non-smokers and 43 percent of smokers agreed that third-hand smoke can harm the health of children.

 

Dr. Winickoff says parents who try to shield their kids from second-hand smoke by rolling down the car window or smoking in a different room are not doing enough to protect them.