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First, Second and Thirdhand Smoke: The Differences and Dangers

The scientific evidence couldn’t be clearer: tobacco is the single deadliest product ever created. It’s brimming with natural and artificial toxins, and everything it touches becomes dangerously contaminated — from the air to the environment to the human body itself... It’s not a term you hear a lot, but firsthand smoke is the stream of smoke inhaled directly by the person using the tobacco product. It comes from cigarettes, cigars, pipes, hookahs and vaping devices. The deadly dangers of firsthand smoke have been documented for decades.

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Articles of Interest

First hand, second hand, third hand: With Cigarette Smoke No Hand Is Safe

With indoor smoking banned in many places, you’d think that secondhand smoke would be less of a problem. Unfortunately, it’s just moved the problem outside and has increased the levels there. Even when moved outside to terraces, hospitality workers, like waiters, may be exposed to levels high enough to be dangerous.

Health Hazards from Smoking and Other Tobacco Use

Tobacco use kills more than 480,000 people each year in the United States—more than the total number killed by AIDS, alcohol, motor vehicles, homicide, illegal drugs and suicide combined.1 Among current smokers, 57 percent of all male deaths and nearly 50 percent of all deaths in women are attributed to smoking.2 Even if the number of smoking related deaths were cut in half, smoking would still kill more people than all of these other causes.

Is Thirdhand Smoke Less Dangerous? Experts Weigh In

Although active and second-hand smoke affects the health of all age groups, little is known about the extent of human exposure to THS and the consequent health effects.

Second-Hand and Third-Hand Smoke as Deadly as First-Hand Smoke

While first-hand smoke refers to the smoke inhaled by a smoker and second-hand smoke to the exhaled smoke and other substances emanating from the burning cigarette that can get inhaled by others, third-hand smoke is the second-hand smoke that gets left on the surfaces of objects, ages over time and becomes progressively more toxic.

Secondhand and thirdhand smoke: a review on chemical contents, exposure routes, and protective strategies

Secondhand smoke (SHS: a mixture of sidestream and mainstream smoke) and thirdhand smoke (THS: made up of the pollutants that settle indoors after smoking in closed environments) are a significant public health concern.

Smoking and your health

Smoking tobacco also harms the people around you. There is no safe level of tobacco smoke exposure. If a non-smoker breathes in your smoke this is called passive smoking. Passive smoking is especially risky for unborn babies, children and young people, and people with breathing problems. Non-smokers who live with a person who smokes have a 25% to 30% greater risk of developing heart disease.

Smoking harms not just your physical health, but your mental health too

Although some studies have shown that the nicotine in cigarettes can improve concentration and attention (making smokers feel more alert), there’s more to cigarettes than just nicotine. They contain over 4,000 chemicals – over 50 of which are known to be toxic in nature: the carbon monoxide also found in car exhaust fumes, butane found in lighter fluid, and arsenic, ammonia, and methanol found in rocket fuel, for example.

Will we ever… make a safe cigarette?

There are some measures that could individually reduce the number of carcinogens in smoke: modifying the blend of tobacco; refining the curing process; including charcoal filters to absorb some of the volatiles; and so on. “But there’s no evidence that this does any good,” says Hecht. None of these measures completely deletes the full spectrum of carcinogens, and Hecht adds, “We tend to focus on the compounds that we know are dangerous, but that’s maybe only a few hundred of the 4,000 that are identified. There could be other things going on that we’re not aware of.”