Science, policy and the rise of ‘thirdhand smoke’ as a public health issue

Abstract

‘Thirdhand smoke’, the designated term for the cigarette smoke toxicants that linger on room and car surfaces long after the smoke itself dissipates, is a concept that has gained increasing prominence in tobacco control policy and research over the past six years. In this paper, I track the emergence of thirdhand smoke as a social and scientific concept, conducting a critical analysis of newspaper reports and references to the term in the academic and policy literature. Demonstrating that claims about the health effects of thirdhand smoke occurred in the absence of evidence of harm, I examine the broader sociopolitical conditions that enabled the concept to become meaningful (and useful). I show that some of the concept’s legitimacy came from its presentation as a natural extension of secondhand smoke, and its framing as a particular threat to babies and children. However, I argue that the experiential, embodied dimension of thirdhand smoke itself was crucial to its success.

Keywords:

• Thirdhand smoke
• media
• tobacco control
• secondhand smoke
• passive smoking
• risk
• public health

Acknowledgements

The initial draft of this paper was written while I was a visiting researcher at the Brocher Foundation in Switzerland in the summer of 2012. The content has been influenced by ongoing conversations with Simone Dennis, and I am also very grateful for the helpful feedback provided by Darlene McNaughton, the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript, and Andy Alaszewski.

Notes

^1. I have never received any funding from the tobacco industry; nor am I ‘aligned’ with it, although I have occasionally been accused of such. I have previously discussed my stance on tobacco research – and the currently polarity in the field – in Bell (2013) and Bell and Dennis (2013).

^2. As Brandt (1998) has noted, each of these terms has particular social and political implications. For example, ‘involuntary’ smoking emphasises the ‘voluntary’ and intentional nature of smoking; ‘secondhand smoke’ emphasises the ‘used’ nature of the smoke, while ‘environmental tobacco smoke’ invites public concern about smoking as an environmental hazard.

^3. I have previously made these points about secondhand smoke (see Bell 2011), but they apply equally to thirdhand smoke. Simone Dennis also has several works in progress that provide an extended discussion of the ways air is explicated in the era of ‘Smokefree’.