Third-hand smoke is a cancer danger!

Source of image: http://img122.imageshack.us/i/cigaretteschrismaddenvl6.gif/


" Third-hand smoke, the residue from 


tobacco that clings to surfaces, reacts with an indoor air pollutant to produce carcinogens, U.S. researchers say.
Corresponding author Hugo Destaillats, a chemist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, and colleagues report that in laboratory tests using cellulose as a model indoor material exposed to smoke, levels of newly formed tobacco-specific nitrosamines detected on cellulose surfaces were 10 times higher than those originally present in the sample following exposure for three hours to a "high but reasonable" concentration of nitrous acid. "Nitrosamines are chemical compounds that tend to be carcinogenic. (Approximately 90% of nitrosamines cause cancer, according to Dr. Richard A. Scanlan, Ph.D, Dean of Research Emeritus and Professor of Food Science of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University) A tobacco-specific nitrosamine is derived from tobacco, particularly the vapor produced through the burning of a tobacco cigarette or cigar." (source:http://www.examiner.com/x-35402-Health-Examiner~y2010m2d9-Thirdhand-smoke-causes-cancer-study-shows-risks-to-babies-and--toddlers-What-is-thirdhand-smoke )




"Unvented gas appliances are the main source of nitrous acid indoors, while most vehicle engines emit some nitrous acid that can infiltrate the passenger compartments, the authors said.
"The burning of tobacco releases nicotine in the form of a vapor that adsorbs strongly onto indoor surfaces, such as walls, floors, carpeting, drapes and furniture. Nicotine can persist on those materials for days, weeks and even months," Destaillats said in a statement.
"Our study shows that when this residual nicotine reacts with ambient nitrous acid it forms carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines."

Source: http://www.pnas.org/

"The term "thirdhand smoke" was coined in 2009, in a study in the journal Pediatrics which found that 65 percent of nonsmokers thought that the residue of tobacco smoke found on furniture and drapes, in rugs and dust, and on skin and clothing, can harm children and infants. Only 43 percent of smokers thought that it posed a health risk."

"That study focused on 

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earlier research analyzing the potential harms to children and infants from ingesting or breathing any of the 250 toxic substances found in tobacco smoke, such as lead. Research also found that many children had detectable blood levels of cotinine, a chemical formed by exposure to nicotine.

However, the Berkeley lab researchers also found that when nitrous acid in the air reacts with nicotine, tobacco-specific nitrosamines, or TSNAs, are created.

Unburned tobacco and tobacco smoke already contain TSNAs, which in 1989 the U.S. surgeon general listed among the carcinogens found in tobacco.

What's new is how many more of them are created when nicotine reacts with nitrous acid. After exposing surfaces to tobacco smoke, the Berkeley lab researchers found levels of TSNAs increased 10 times after exposure to nitrous acid. (source:http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_14359829?source=most_viewed


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I knew my health  problems in a condo I lived in were due to the smokers and the fireplaces which surrounded my condo, now I have scientific proof of this.

NASA: Last decade warmest on record

Melt water cascading from the top of an  Antartic iceberg (Image: 2005 Kim Reisenbichler)




WASHINGTON -- A new analysis of global surface temperatures by NASA scientists finds the past year was tied for the second warmest since 1880. In the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year on record.

Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade because of a strong La Nina that cooled the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2009 saw a return to a near-record global temperatures as the La Nina diminished, according to the new analysis by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The past year was a small fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest on record, putting 2009 in a virtual tie with a cluster of other years --1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2007 -- for the second warmest on record.

"There's always interest in the annual temperature numbers and a given year's ranking, but the ranking often misses the point," said James Hansen, GISS director. "There's substantial year-to-year variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Nino-La Nina cycle. When we average temperature over five or ten years to minimize that variability, we find global warming is continuing unabated."

January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record. Looking back to 1880, when modern scientific instrumentation became available to monitor temperatures precisely, a clear warming trend is present, although there was a leveling off between the 1940s and 1970s.

In the past three decades, the GISS surface temperature record shows an upward trend of about 0.36 degrees F (0.2 degrees C) per decade. In total, average global temperatures have increased by about 1.5 degrees F (0.8 degrees C) since 1880.

"That's the important number to keep in mind," said GISS climatologist Gavin Schmidt. "The difference between the second and sixth warmest years is trivial because the known uncertainty in the temperature measurement is larger than some of the differences between the warmest years."

The near-record global temperatures of 2009 occurred despite an unseasonably cool December in much of North America. High air pressures from the Arctic decreased the east-west flow of the jet stream, while increasing its tendency to blow from north to south. The result was an unusual effect that caused frigid air from the Arctic to rush into North America and warmer mid-latitude air to shift toward the north. This left North America cooler than normal, while the Arctic was warmer than normal.

"The contiguous 48 states cover only 1.5 percent of the world area, so the United States' temperature does not affect the global temperature much," Hansen said.

GISS uses publicly available data from three sources to conduct its temperature analysis. The sources are weather data from more than a thousand meteorological stations around the world, satellite observations of sea surface temperatures, and Antarctic research station measurements.

Other research groups also track global temperature trends but use different analysis techniques. The Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom uses similar input measurements as GISS, for example, but it omits large areas of the Arctic and Antarctic where monitoring stations are sparse.

Although the two methods produce slightly differing results in the annual rankings, the decadal trends in the two records are essentially identical.

"There's a contradiction between the results shown here and popular perceptions about climate trends," Hansen said. "In the last decade, global warming has not stopped." 




Source:http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/jan/HQ_10-017_Warmest_temps.html

For more information about GISS's surface temperature record, visit:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

For video and still images about this story, visit:

http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?010557