bbface Sorry to pick you out but I have to point a few things out.
"Trials, medical research, medical conclusions... Take a long long time to come to fruition. Indeed, in your second paragraph, you freely admit that there have been no clinical studies on the issue, and yet how can you be so positive on the matter? The issue of third hand smoke is in limbo, no doubt about it. Nothing is clear and very little proven, but the fact that there MIGHT be problem, is surely a compelling enough reason for this mother to want to protect her child from it? "
Sorry, but perhaps I've not been clear. The issue of third hand smoke is not in limbo, for the scares to be true a number of fundamental scientific laws would have to be false.
When I said that there have been no clinical studies on the issue, this was perhaps misleading. The effects of third hand smoke have not been adequately tested. This is because the levels of possible pollutants are in general so low that they cannot be picked up, as I say in my 7th paragraph.
There have been a couple of studies, which the authors of the original article refer to. One, in 2004, looked at the levels of nicotine found in air and surfaces in the homes of 17 smokers compared to 17 non-smokers. They found that in the non-smokers homes, there was an average of 0.1 nanograms of nicotine per square metre, whereas in the smokers homes, there was an average of 0.32 nanograms/m2. To put that into perspective, a nanogram is a billionth of a gram. Studies on second hand smoke (an issue which, as per my post above, genuinely is still in limbo) looking at pubs etc before the smoking ban show nicotine levels of up to 814 nanograms over an eight hour shift.
So wow, three times as much, that must be harmful, right? Well, no. Only half of the surfaces in the living room and bedrooms, and a third of the dust samples in the smokers houses (where the smoker claimed not to smoke inside), where even above detectable levels. And they don't know why there was nicotine in the non-smokers houses.
It's a fairly fundamental law of toxicology that "the dose makes the poison". There are a number of highly toxic chemicals that we ingest every day, but in insufficient quantities to do any harm. Hell, just about anything, even water is harmful if taken in sufficient quantities.
Take one of the chemicals referred to in the original article, polonium-210. This is highly radioactive, and also a nasty carcinogen. So traces of it left by cigarette smoke must be harmful, right? Again, no. We naturally ingest about 1-10 picocuries a day. Most leaves our bodies naturally, and the remainder decreases with a half-life of about 50 days.
A fatal dose of polonium-210 is 5 millicuries. It would take one quadrillion days (2.74 trillion years) for that child to absorb 5 millicuries. Unfortunately the universe is only 10 billion years old, so the child would have to lick floors for 274 cycles of our expanding universe. Of course since he'd normally excrete most of that polonium we'd have to refuse to change his diaper until the end of that period... not a very pleasant thought. And then there's that whole annoying fact that polonium's half-life is only 138 days, so we'd just have to ignore the laws of physics as well in order to justify the story's thesis?
The baby would have to lick carpet for thousands and thousands of years to pick up enough of the 'more concentrated' residual carcinogens.
The original paper quoted one study looking at the effects of exposure to low levels of tobacco smoke, which reported an association between parental smoking and lower levels of reading ability. However, the study was not controlled for among other things, socio-economic status, household income, higher birthweight, education levels of parents etc. Nicotine metabolites were inversely proportional to all these things. i.e.children who started out healthier and were more likely to have had educational opportunities, had slightly better reading scores, regardless of parental smoking status.
As parents, we judge risks all the time, whether to let our child ride their bike, climb a climbing frame, walk along a pavement next to a road. There is no detectable risk in third hand smoke beyond what was suggested by a group funded by the worlds biggest producer of smoking cessation products, and a survey on what people thought of the issue.
Because my sister gave up smoking before my first was born, simply on account that I was having a new born. And my brother will happily follow whatever I ask of him when it comes to my brother. This is how a loving and respectful family behaves OP,
My family did not all give up smoking when I was pregnant, and this is nothing to do with them not being loving and respectful, and actually I find it vaguely offensive that you would think they are. It is to do with them and me being able to actually read the research and judge the relevant risks.
OP, congratulations on your newborn, and enjoy these days because they are wonderful (if sleep-deprived!). If you don't want your ILs to smoke even outside, then tell them. If you want them to wash their hands after they smoke, then tell them. If you don't want them to smoke at all, then tell them. But do so with the correct facts at your disposal, rather than the results of a biased study and picking up on media hysteria.