New Front in the Tobacco Wars: Killer Third-Hand Smoke

Tuesday, 9th February 2010

It's more than a year since I first scoffed at the notion that "third-hand smoke" was going to kill us all. And now I see that this nonsense is back. Over to you, Chris Snowdon:

The respondents were not told that the idea of "tobacco toxins" being harmful at ultra-low levels was no more than a "possibility" (in the words of the final study), nor that the researchers themselves referred to thirdhand smoke only as a "concept". If they had been told that the researchers believed that smokers spread disease "through contaminated dust and surfaces, including the frame of an infant's bed and a smoker's finger" it is fair to guess that far fewer of them would have endorsed the theory.

Lots more here. One need not be a scientist to notice that a good deal of the anti-tobacco industry's claims are simply made up. Not that this seems to worry the Department of Health since, of course, it's all in a good cause. Another form of nudging, really.

Filed under: Lunacy (136 more articles) , Smoking (47 more articles)

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terence patrick hewett

February 9th, 2010 7:16pm Report this comment

How about the BBC's swivel eyed Passive Drinking exposure. Overtime at the P45 printing factory in a few weeks time.

Chris F J Cyrnik

February 10th, 2010 7:50pm Report this comment

Third hand smoke is of course completely ludicrous, for one thing there is no smoke element involved, and second what possible scientific tests have in fact been carried out to validate this crap?

Anti-smoking zealots are simply and unsuccessfully clutching at straws, having to come up with more outrageous things all the time so that they can continue to harangue smoking and smokers.

Is fourth hand smoke around the corner…simply just looking at a pack of cigarettes, cigars or pipe tobacco will induce epileptic brain seizures, which of course would be linked to cot death syndrome, knock-knees, genital warts…new research has shown!