Third-hand smoke a threat to Black children and families

By Charles Hallman
Staff Writer

The University of Minnesota recently has received a federal grant to examine “third-hand smoke” among Black parents.
“We are going into the homes, collecting information on second-hand smoke in the air, and we also getting and testing urine samples from a child in the home,” says lead researcher Dr. Janet Thomas of Project STARS (Start Taking Action to Restrict Smoking), a $1.2 million project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The project, which Thomas says is slated to run until next summer, is part of a total $7 million NIH grant, which helped create the Center for Health Equity and has partnered with NorthPoint Health and Wellness Center.
Its goal is to recruit at least 200 families for Project STARS.
“We are hoping to recruit the majority of participants from the North Minneapolis community,” pledges Thomas, adding that NorthPoint counselor Alysha Price and other health workers were hired and will work with project participants.
Thomas explains what third-hand smoke is: “There is a lot of interest now in the scientific community in the presence of nicotine residue that rests on surfaces after the cigarette is distinguished. The primary exposure obviously is smoking the cigarette and breathing that smoke yourself. Second-hand smoke is in the air, and other people can breathe that. And then the third-hand [smoke] is what left on surfaces.”
Studies have shown that Blacks suffer more from tobacco-related diseases than any other group. Thomas notes that there are many Black parents who try not to smoke around their children, “but they kind of cheat — if nobody is home, they might still smoke in their home. So even if the homes are considered smoke-free, the children are still exposed.”
Project STARS also will check smoke residue in automobiles as well, says Thomas. “The car can have a lot of free-flowing nicotine.”
Thomas says she has been studying the effects of smoking on Blacks and other people of color for several years now. “One thing that I quickly noticed is that many of the participants said they smoked because of stress,” she surmises. “The appeal is that smoking unfortunately helps you deal with other issues you might have, like dealing with stress, concern about weight, appearing cool. That seems to overshadow some of the health concerns.”
She also was involved in an earlier three-month pilot study last year funded by the American Cancer Society, where urine samples were collected from Black children living in homes with parents who are smokers. An air quality monitor along with a “flypaper-like” device that “picks up free-flowing nicotine in the air” also was placed in those homes, she explains.
“We learned that by smoking in the home, the children in the home are at an elevated risk of becoming smokers themselves, and for later developing some of these known health effects, like heart disease, lung disease and cancer,” reports Thomas.
Ninety percent of the 80 parents studied “had identified cancer-causing agents that are only tobacco-related” in their children’s system, “and 95 percent had nicotine in their system,” asserts Thomas. “We were hoping that this information would help them quit smoking,” she says, adding that only two families did quit smoking. “But the majority of the homes that got the intervention decided to make their homes smoke-free.”
A “wellness plan” that includes “motivating interviewing” counseling also will be used with the project participants. “It really address where a person is in their readiness to make a behavior change, and it has a problem-solving component,” Thomas says. “If somebody is not ready or not even thinking about quitting smoking, this counseling allows the counselor to help them with other health-related issues or just life-related issues.”
She hopes that Project STARS “will be a better project that will result in more families going smoke-free in their homes as well as more folk [being] able to quit smoking. We are excited that we were able to secure funding and be able to specifically address the needs of not only the African American community, but also the North Minneapolis area.
“It’s a feel-good project.”

Charles Hallman welcomes reader responses to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.