Thirdhand Smoke: The Danger to Other People (& Pets)

As a kid, road trips with my grandparents meant hours listening to Bing Crosby and Glenn Miller on AM radio. It also meant arriving to our destination reeking of Swisher Sweets cigars and Pall Mall cigarettes. My grandparents never thought twice about smoking in the car — windows up — even with kids bouncing around in the backseat.

Thanks to decades of research since, we now know what my grandparents did not. Exposure to secondhand smoke isn’t safe. But there's another danger you might not know about — thirdhand smoke.

Thirdhand smoke is the chemicals that build up on surfaces over time in a place where people smoke a lot. It can be in a building or vehicle.

It may even be deadly — not just for people, but for our pets, too.

“There is no safe level of exposure,” says tobacco treatment specialist Neely Dahl, MPH, CTTS. “If you want to continue smoking, that’s fine. But it’s not OK to expose others to the many health risks associated with it.”

Second & Thirdhand Smoke: What's the Difference?

Light up a cigarette, cigar, pipe, or joint, or take a drag of one of these and exhale, and you’re creating secondhand smoke. If it’s a tobacco product, that smoke contains about 7,000 chemicals, 70 of which cause cancer.