Third-Hand Smoke is also toxic

Published on February 9, 2009 6:17 AM

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The most harmful substance for the human health is considered to be cigarette smoke and smoking. According to a recent study, more dangerous, especially for young children, is third-hand smoke. Third-hand smoke is particles found in carpets, curtains in the room where one smokes, and these substances remain toxic long after the cigarette is put out.

This "third-hand smoke," which contains heavy metals (lead, cadmium), various chemical compounds (arsenic products, toluene, etc.) and even radioactive substances (polonium 210), is especially dangerous for young children, who are in close contact with various surfaces and swallow two times more dust than adults.

Without any doubts smoking is the leading cause of death worldwide. Researchers consider that more than 500 million people will die because of smoking-related diseases in the coming years.

Cigarette smoking and smoke

can affect people in the prime of life and can cut between 20 and 25 years off these people's life expectancy, showed statistics.

The impacts of smoking are due to the significant increase of the risk of developing several serious diseases, especially heart and lung diseases. For example, among heavy smokers (35 cigarettes or more a day), the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases is increased by four times, lung cancer, by 40 times, and lung diseases by 115 times.

The cancer risk increase associated with smoking is especially disturbing. Besides lung cancer, smoking increases the risk of developing 14 different types of cancer.

The catastrophic health effects of smoking are due to the 4,000 chemical substances in cigarette smoke, of which at least 60 are powerful carcinogens.

During the burning of tobacco, these substances transform into highly reactive molecules that bind themselves to the DNA, which dramatically increases the risk of causing mutations that lead to the development of cancer.

These findings showed us once again that smoking alone is responsible for 85 percent of lung cancers and 30 percent of all cancers in general.

Another excellent reason to quit smoking is the impact cigarette smoke can have on the people around smokers. For example, we have known for a long time that people who live with smokers are at about 25 percent more risk of developing lung cancer than people who live in a smoke-free environment, and up to 1.6 percent of all lung cancers are the result of a prolonged exposure to second-hand smoke.

Even though these risks are smaller than those incurred by smokers, researchers can only encourage people who smoke to minimize the second-hand smoking and third-hand smoke.