Did they do a clinical study? No, they did a survey and found people who agree.
These researchers went a step further and asked if ‘third hand smoke’ – not whether or not stray particulate matter from a cigarette smoked an hour ago could cause brain damage in a child but specifically third hand smoke – could also harm kids and found that and 65.2 percent of nonsmokers and 43.3 percent of smokers believed that third-hand smoke harms children, yet most of them could not possibly have ever heard the term ‘third hand smoke’ before. Choosing the name made it dangerous.
The problem is that no study was carried out – a phone survey was done asking if people thought third hand smoke was a health hazard – and used the results to determine that it is. It does not matter one iota to the ‘researchers’ that they have no evidence whatsoever – no study, no scientific material, nothing to back up their claim that third hand smoke is dangerous. Lead researcher Dr. Jonathan Winickoff stated “Your nose isn’t lying,” he said. “The stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: ’Get away.’” How ridiculous can it get? This is akin to saying that when you smell foods your brain is saying they are toxic and to refrain from ingesting it.

What is their goal? A home smoking ban, of course

This whole anti smoker campaign is getting very, very silly. More like ‘Tobacco Out of Control’. Please shut up and go away….

@Chas Where did I say I wanted to blame smoke for all illness. Can you show me the peer-reviewed scientific literature that demonstrates the link between “chemicals” and children’s immune system deficits. Moreover, can you show me the peer-reviewed scientific literature that provides evidence for the “very poor” state of children’s immune systems?

@Joyce I don’t know what survey you’re talking about, certainly nothing to do with the science I discussed in this post.

@db The efforts of those people who prefer smoking to become a thing of the past for the sake of all our health are not “very, very silly”.

@Joyce Just noticed that you cut and paste your comment from another site…just to reiterate, this post has nothing to do with the earlier Winickoff research and more to the point is actually quite anti the concept of third-hand smoke in at least one sense, which you’d have spotted had you actually read it rather than spamming my site.

David. You believe that third hand smoke causes serious harm to children, but not chemicals. You need to look into the dangers of chemicals.
What conflicting interests do have have in Tobacco Control?

To your credit, David, you express scepticism over this ‘research’.

Unfortunately you then go on to state ….’All that said, if this kind of research encourages people not to smoke and helps push through legislation outlawing smoke-producing tobacco products that’s all well and good’ & ‘rather than improving the chances of our eradicating this foul and filthy habit’ & ‘You certainly don’t get that with crack or crystal meth addicts, they’re rather clingy when it comes to sharing’.

It’s junk science, a means to an end – you more of less said it yourself… ‘I’m not sure their hypothetical exposure story actually stacks up to the measurements either’

@Chase I never said that I thought third-hand tobacco smoke was causing serious harm to children. Indeed the reason I wrote those off-the-cuff post was because someone flagged the original press release with a picture of an infant and mentioned emphysema, which I thought was scurrilous. More to the point though where do you get the right to cast aspersions on my integrity. WTF? What’s “Tobacco Control” anyway, is that an organisation? I certainly have no vested interest in anything like that.

@db Yes, that conclusion was perhaps a little over-the-top, but smoking *is* a foul and filthy habit, there’s no two-ways about it. Have you ever tried to breathe through an asthma attack in a crowded room with smokers? I can’t believe how people defend it.

The end justifies the means eh?
That is a very dangerous slippery slope you’re on there and not one that should be entertained at all in the world of science.

Frankly Mr Bradley, you should be ashamed.

@Tony What end? What means. This is a blog post not the Queen’s speech.

David
I think you spotted it ok, another piece of non evidence. You do not have to be a “pro smoker” to see another link in the chain marked Propaganda,after all our very own HSE research told us that secondhand smoke could not be raised to a level that would cause any specific diseases so what chance would thirdhand smoke stand. Still it keeps the anti-tobacco bandwagon rolling,but not for long.

I cannot believe the world is stupid enough to absorb this non scientific codswallop from an unknown called Winickoff. The basis of this mirage of 3rd hand smoke is 1,300 + phone calls with loaded questions to vulnerable householders.
Q…How long has 3rd hand smoke been around?
A…Since man learned how to light a fire!

Q…How long before 3rd hand smoke is declared on a par with sarin gas?
A…As soon as the £3.75m grant in America deems it so!

My, my, how my parents must have mistreated me as a kid with all those garden bonfires, open log & coal fires we used to enjoy. The funniest thing Mr Bradley? I don’t smoke either but I love the whiff of a cigarette, cigar, log fire, bonfire etc.
As for yourself, to support junk science because it is ‘a means to an end’ is a testament to your total lack of integrity

Er, what on earth has so called 3rd hand smoking, totally unproven to have harmful effects, to do with asthma? I know a number of smokers who are asthmatic, and who do not have attacks when they light up. Indeed, I read recently (can’t remember exactly, although I think it may also been an Israeli study) that asthma attacks are often brought on as a result of panic in a smoky environment, rather than by the smoke itself. Believe it or not, I even know of someone who smokes in order to alleviate the symptoms.

I have no problem with those who hate smoking, so long as they don’t resort to deliberate scaremongering in order to justify their position. The simple fact is that there is no evidence that residual traces of tobacco smoke on clothes etc poses any risk to anyone. Too much anti smoking hysteria is the result of blatant misrepresentation of levels of risk (e.g. second hand smoking). And now we are seeing the same tactics applied to other things, particularly alcohol. Perhaps you like a drink, a total abstainer might argue that the slightest amount of alcohol in your blood stream puts third parties at risk. You might argue that the risk is negligible. Negligible or not, it exists. Most normal people accept reasonable risk as part of everyday life. I certainly do. Those who don’t might be described as paranoiac. What we all probably agree with is that alcohol has a much greater potential impact on others than smoking ever did. I can’t recall any smoker assaulting or killing someone because they’d smoked one too many. If you want to eradicate smoking for health & safety reasons, then you should have no qualms about alcohol prohibition.

@Phil J This post is not about Winickoff.

“”………but smoking *is* a foul and filthy habit, there’s no two-ways about it.”"

“Foul and filthy”. A strange phrase to use in connection with burning a few bits of dried leaf.

“Foul”. This word is generally reserved for something really, really awful. “Murder most foul” is a phrase that springs to mind.

“Filthy”. If I spend several hours in the garden, digging and weeding and such, my hands and to a lesser extent, my clothes, might become a little dirty. Not terribly, terribly dirty – sufficient for them to need washing – no big deal. We use the word ‘filthy’ to describe something which is really, really mucky. One could hardly say that the produce of the burning of a few bits of dried leaf is ‘filthy’. Of course, David, you PERSONALLY can say that if you wish, but your own opinion is hardly a description of objective fact, is it? The fact that you use the phrase “…there’s no two ways about it” suggests that you actually mean that ‘foul and filthy’ is an objective fact.

Oddly enough, you have not also used the word ‘stink’. (Believe it or not, there are still lots of ‘stinkers’ around) Few anti-tobacco zealots realise that one person’s ‘stink’ is another person’s ‘fragrance’ (I LOVE the smell of tobacco!).

“”Have you ever tried to breathe through an asthma attack in a crowded room with smokers? I can’t believe how people defend it.”"

It is a pity that you suffer from that condition. My wife suffers from MS – she cannot walk at all. One of her little pleasure is tobacco. We used to go the pub one afternoon a week for lunch. Since she can no longer smoke in the pub, she doesn’t want to go – “Too much trouble”. Her condition limits what she can do and where she can do it and for how long. I think that a person with asthma is similarly limited. A person with asthma should not go into situations where the condition is aggravated. That is a simple fact of life.

The facts in the matter of smoking are quite simple:

1. Smoking MAY be harmful but adults can decide for themselves.
2. SHS is harmless for all intents and purposes.
3. The ban has eroded our private property rights.
4. The ban has eroded our right to assemble peacefully.

Everyone should be against the ban for those reasons, on the grounds that there is no knowing where the erosion of our freedoms will end.

@db Yes, you’re right, smoking does have a short-term bronchodilatory effect. But, I’m not prone to panic, nor to “traditional” asthma attacks of the kind commonly portrayed in the dramatic media and I can tell you from repeated personal experience (prior to the smoking ban here in England) that secondhand smoke has a seriously deleterious effect on my lung function. I assume you didn’t read the actual post I wrote and just assumed that was I scaremongering, because if you had, you’d have realised that its tenor was one of skepticism, it was only my concluding paragraph (now removed) in which I extrapolated my own feelings beyond the science.

@PhilJ WTF? Again, this post doesn’t even mention this Winickoff person!

Subject closed.

@Junican I’m very sorry to hear about your wife, but yes “breathing through” an asthma attack is possible for some people, not all, but I don’t think being able to overcome one’s symptoms so that others can fill one’s lungs with a long list of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals (most of which people would run a mile from if they were in their food or water supply) is justification for allowing people to smoke in pubs. Should I trot out the list of compounds found in tobacco smoke, along with their toxic doses, accumulation rates and chronic effects? As to my not using the word “stink”, why should I feel obliged to defend against your arguments for a word I didn’t use. As to the use of “foul”, the phrase that sprang first to my mind was not “murder most foul” (who uses that these days?) but foul weather. Filthy? “Disgustingly dirty”, to me it is.

Anyway, as I said in an earlier comment before I spotted yours (which had been auto-spam filtered for some reason), I’ve taken out the ranting paragraph and left the science in this post.

Subject closed.