Jump to full article: Port St. Joe (FL) Star, 2009-06-25
Author: Marie Logan, Contributing Writer
Intro: He and almost a dozen of his support personnel, investigators and deputies, along with other city and county employees, were halfway through their series of tobacco cessation classes.
And they hadn't lost that focused intensity they all brought to the initial session, either. They were still intent on solving this case of how to quit using tobacco.
After the second class, the group received their first prescription for Chantix, a prescription medication used to help people quit smoking. . . .
But just as the effects of smoking are bad on Nugent himself, the effects of his second-hand smoke (also called Environmental Tobacco Smoke or ETS) are dangerous to his family members - and that includes Amber, the Sheriff's bloodhound, if she happens to be around cigarette smoke while with Nugent. . . .
New studies are showing that pets get dosed with poisons from tobacco smoke in two ways: through second-hand smoke and by ingesting the actual smoke particles when they groom themselves, which is being labeled third-hand smoke. . . .
And the licking of things is also a heretofore undetected source of smoke carcinogens for babies, too.
An article in Pediatrics Magazine in the beginning of this year highlighted the risk to pregnant women and babies of third-hand smoke.
. . .
An article published in July 2005 in the world-renowned medical journal Lancet indicated that private research conducted by the Philip Morris cigarette company in the 1980s showed that second-hand smoke was highly toxic. Yet the company suppressed the findings during the next two decades.
So the Surgeon General's report was right: there is absolutely no risk-free level of second-hand smoke exposure - to any living thing, especially children, pets and other people living with a smoker.
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