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Disclosure: As I’ve mentioned before, I have a serious allergy to cigarette smoke that can result in anaphylactic shock. For this reason, I may be a little more sensitive than most people to health care warnings about nicotine.

Scientists in Berkeley, California have recently published results of a study warning of further dangers from cigarette smoking.

The dangers of mainstream and secondhand tobacco smoke have been well documented as a cause of cancer, cardiovascular disease and stroke, pulmonary disease and birth defects. Only recently, however, has the general public been made aware of the threats posed by third-hand smoke.

Hugo Destaillats of the Indoor Environment Department at Berkeley Lab says, 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. Our study shows that when this residual nicotine reacts with ambient nitrous acid it forms carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines or TSNAs. TSNAs are among the most broadly acting and potent carcinogens present in unburned tobacco and tobacco smoke.

Basically smoker’s clothes and skin become coated with nicotine, which will then react with nitrous acid floating inside a building and produce a coating of hazardous TSNA.

Lara Gundel of the Berkeley Lab says,

Smoking outside is better than smoking indoors but nicotine residues will stick to a smoker’s skin and clothing. Those residues follow a smoker back inside and get spread everywhere. The biggest risk is to young children. Dermal uptake of the nicotine through a child’s skin is likely to occur when the smoker returns and if nitrous acid is in the air, which it usually is, then TSNAs will be formed.

The authors of the paper suggest that only 100 percent smoke free environments in public places can be acceptably healthy. In the case of buildings where substantial smoking has occurred in the past, they recommend that the carpets, walls, furniture and ceilings be replaced.

Read the full Press Release here.