Thirdhand smoke is a new frontier, and UC’s Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program has assembled a group of investigators, including at LBNL and UCSF, to study the health risks caused by the remnants of cigarette smoke.
“Third hand smoke is what you smell when you go into a hotel room where people have been smoking or what rubs off on your skin when you touch a wall or if you visit somebody’s house and they’ve been smoking. So that means its not only in the air but its also coming out of surfaces. Third hand smoke is the residue in tobacco smoking that is in a building after people have smoked.” – Laura Gundel, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Thridhand smoke is a new cash cow for grant writing and big pharma anti- smoking drugs. The logical thing to do would be to ban tobacco outright, like cocaine and heroine, but then the people who study things like thirdhand smoke might have to find new careers, without cigarette tax money to support them. Or maybe they could study thirdhand pot smoke.
Well I’ll be honest, that sounds like a far fetched conspiracy theory. Lara Gundel is part of LBL’s Environmental Technologies Division and this type of research can broadly apply to a variety of indoor air pollutants.