Here We Go Again...Now There's "Third Hand" Smoke
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I think second hand smoke is real, but not in the way that they portray it.
If you are a nonsmoking waitress and you've worked in a smoky bar from 20-60 then that is a considerable amount of exposure that you've accumulated in your lifetime, especially if you factor in the smoke exposure in the home or in other public places or unrelated environmental exposures. (To things like radon or exhaust or incidental gases/chemicals that may be in the air)
On the other hand, it is absolutely ludicrous to suggest that a person can get lung cancer by passing through smokers congregating outside close to a doorway. It is also ludicrous to say that second hand smoke is equivalent to the act of smoking itself, because surely that can't be the case! Especially if you are talking about cigarette smoking and the deep inhalation into the lungs that that involves.
"Third hand smoke" being able to cause cancer just sounds like a politically-driven delusion. I can see someone with an extreme sensitivity to smells/residues having an asthma attack or some other respiratory episode from exposure to "third hand smoke" because it is very similar to someone wearing a fragrance if you think about it. And we all know that heavy scents like that can trigger reactions in sensitive people. But it is a completely different argument to state that you can get something fatal like cancer from such minuscule exposure!
I personally smoke outdoors 90% of the time because I don't want to be breathing my own smoke and because other people don't like the scents, but do I think it harms them to walk into a room where one smoked even hours before? No I don't.
The air pollution from industrial and vehicular sources is definitely a bigger culprit of lung disease than second or third hand smoke. If pipe smokers have a fairly low incidence of lung cancer in comparison to cigarette smokers, then that alone is an indication that being around smoke upon occasion is not so harmful as direct and repeated inhalation over many years.
Public smoking bans have occurred across most of the Western World by now, so I think nonsmokers should rest assured that they are safe from any health effects. Someone smoking at a park bench ten feet away from you isn't going to shorten your life - you should be more worried about the smog and the full parking lot and the bogged down freeways and the smokestacks belching in the distance than a poor chap trying to puff his pipe in the wind...
I have heard of people throw pressure treated or creosote treated wood or (god forbid) TIRES into a bonfire who would probably protest about someone smoking A cigarette around their children. Is there any cure for stupidity? Even a properly built campfire is not benign if you sat around one every day, huffing in the smoke. But nobody would think twice about keeping their children from such a minimal exposure - because it doesn't happen often!
Wood smoke is not benign - if only you could ask someone who has been close to a forest fire or the Victorian chimney sweeps with all kinds of cancer on their bodies from rubbing against soot for years on end...
If you are a nonsmoking waitress and you've worked in a smoky bar from 20-60 then that is a considerable amount of exposure that you've accumulated in your lifetime, especially if you factor in the smoke exposure in the home or in other public places or unrelated environmental exposures. (To things like radon or exhaust or incidental gases/chemicals that may be in the air)
On the other hand, it is absolutely ludicrous to suggest that a person can get lung cancer by passing through smokers congregating outside close to a doorway. It is also ludicrous to say that second hand smoke is equivalent to the act of smoking itself, because surely that can't be the case! Especially if you are talking about cigarette smoking and the deep inhalation into the lungs that that involves.
"Third hand smoke" being able to cause cancer just sounds like a politically-driven delusion. I can see someone with an extreme sensitivity to smells/residues having an asthma attack or some other respiratory episode from exposure to "third hand smoke" because it is very similar to someone wearing a fragrance if you think about it. And we all know that heavy scents like that can trigger reactions in sensitive people. But it is a completely different argument to state that you can get something fatal like cancer from such minuscule exposure!
I personally smoke outdoors 90% of the time because I don't want to be breathing my own smoke and because other people don't like the scents, but do I think it harms them to walk into a room where one smoked even hours before? No I don't.
The air pollution from industrial and vehicular sources is definitely a bigger culprit of lung disease than second or third hand smoke. If pipe smokers have a fairly low incidence of lung cancer in comparison to cigarette smokers, then that alone is an indication that being around smoke upon occasion is not so harmful as direct and repeated inhalation over many years.
Public smoking bans have occurred across most of the Western World by now, so I think nonsmokers should rest assured that they are safe from any health effects. Someone smoking at a park bench ten feet away from you isn't going to shorten your life - you should be more worried about the smog and the full parking lot and the bogged down freeways and the smokestacks belching in the distance than a poor chap trying to puff his pipe in the wind...
I have heard of people throw pressure treated or creosote treated wood or (god forbid) TIRES into a bonfire who would probably protest about someone smoking A cigarette around their children. Is there any cure for stupidity? Even a properly built campfire is not benign if you sat around one every day, huffing in the smoke. But nobody would think twice about keeping their children from such a minimal exposure - because it doesn't happen often!
Wood smoke is not benign - if only you could ask someone who has been close to a forest fire or the Victorian chimney sweeps with all kinds of cancer on their bodies from rubbing against soot for years on end...
Hysteria, plain and simple.
I don't think the allergy or sensitivity excuse works if you are outside. They imagine that they are going to have a reaction and it occurs. I think it is real on the whole, because I know people who have that trouble, but it is almost exclusively indoors and in closed quarters where they have that sort of problem.
I hope that you weren't volunteering at a barbecue and they complained about smoke because that'd be too much for me to handle! I'd probably blow a gasket...
I don't think the allergy or sensitivity excuse works if you are outside. They imagine that they are going to have a reaction and it occurs. I think it is real on the whole, because I know people who have that trouble, but it is almost exclusively indoors and in closed quarters where they have that sort of problem.
I hope that you weren't volunteering at a barbecue and they complained about smoke because that'd be too much for me to handle! I'd probably blow a gasket...
Every time I hear a reference to "The Third Hand," it's in implies divine intervention. So, perhaps this is proof-positive that God is a pipe smoker?
Beyond that, Third Hand Smoke would make a good band name or at least an album cover. Oh, wait, they don't make those anymore...
Beyond that, Third Hand Smoke would make a good band name or at least an album cover. Oh, wait, they don't make those anymore...
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