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Fine Particulate Matter Exposure from Secondhand Cannabis Bong Smoking
- ttyp3 5y agoTobacco 2.0, awaiting suppression from the Cannabis Industrial Complex.
- throwawayboise 5y agoI mean, if you think secondhand tobacco smoke is bad, what basis is there to think that secondhand cannabis smoke is OK? For that matter, what basis is there to think that firsthand cannabis smoking does not have similar long-term health consequences as tobacco smoking? The only obvious reason I can think of is that most people don't smoke cannabis all day, every day as many cigarette smokers do.
- ttyp3 5y agoIn my city they do, morning until night, about every 2 hours or so, directly entering my living space with no way to prevent (in each case one individual, in different buildings). Addiction.
- rosndo 5y agoMaybe you should invest in a locking door so you will be able to prevent these people from entering your living space to smoke cannabis?
- mschuster91 5y agoOP probably lives in a highrise with centralized air condition or with passive toilet vents without a backflow stopper. Either of these is really nasty with any kind of pungent odor, no matter if feces, cooking or smoking.
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoMultifamily housing typically doesn't consist of hermetically sealed units. If your neighbors are doing something that produces odor, if it's strong enough, others are going to smell it in their units too. Additionally, shared spaces in the building often ending up smelling too. This isn't limited to pot smoking but it is a common enough occurrence that it's unreasonable to mock someone for mentioning it.
- xeromal 5y agolol, way to layer on the sarcasm. I live in a complex and I can smell weed every time my neighbor lights up on the balcony even though my door is closed. I like the guy and he doesn't really have an alternative so I don't mind, but it is a bit annoying!
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoNo way for you to prevent it. They could though. In college we exhaled into paper towel tubes filled with toilet paper. It's incredibly effective.
- twofornone 5y ago>For that matter, what basis is there to think that firsthand cannabis smoking does not have similar long-term health consequences as tobacco smoking? The vast majority of tobacco is consumed in the form of cigarettes, which are more of a "tobacco product" than actual tobacco. There is a plethora of additives and most cigarettes are actually composes of a nasty cardboard-like filler[0] which has been soaked in a processed tobacco broth. Whereas smoked marijuana is typically just dried plant matter. So without saying which may be better or worse, there likely is some sort of difference. Plus the growing processes and absorption characteristics of the two plants may produce different amounts of radioactive contaminants which probably contribute to the carcinogenicity of tobacco. 0. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IBAuM1fLKRk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IBAuM1fLKRk - I bet real tobacco is less harmful but don't quote me on that.
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoOn top of that, tobacco smokers on average probably injest way more smoke than cannabis smokers do. Though cannabis smokers tend to hold the smoke in longer.
- tonguez 5y agoabsolutely shocking and mindblowing that inhaling smoke is bad
- h2odragon 5y agoBong resin is easier to clean than tobacco stains. tobacco turns into this lacquer like stuff that only smears and never lifts; cannabis residues are sucked right up with slightly watered ethanol. There's many reasons filtering your indoor air would be a good idea; presence of any smoke is certainly one of them. Look at what hits the air every time you cook, for example.
- lbotos 5y agoIf you want to use cannabis with low risk to your lungs: edibles. If you want to use cannabis with slightly lower risk than smoking: Vape (dry flower or carts). You can even vape through a bong. If you don't care at all about your lungs: smoke.
- porbelm 5y agoAdded: Smokers can reduce their nicotine intake by 50%!!!! Just by mixing the tobacco with weed. Smokers regularly light a cigarette every hour on average. With Cannabis, that might just reduce that to once every few hours!
- emerged 5y agoDry flower is more than “slightly” lower risk, I think. Especially at lower temperature.
- lbotos 5y agoSure, but this is HN, I'm optimizing karma for both sides here ;P (I agree with you though, and I eagerly await the scientific studies that quantify Vaping cannabis vs. smoking)
- denkmoon 5y agoHonestly the lack of research publicly available investigating dry flower cannabis vaping makes me sad. There's basically nothing.
- porbelm 5y agoWell of course second-hand bong smoke is not going to be safe if you as a non-smoker sit in a hotbox environment lol Just like the second-hand smoke debates twenty-thirty years ago
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoWhile people smoke much less weed than to acco on a volume basis, hot boxing Is a problem fairly unique to weed smokers. To acco smokers aren't doing anything illegal, and to acco stinks, so someone's likely to want to open the window, and likely to convince the group to let them.
- 8bitsrule 5y agoAccording to Lancet (some time back, after a half-day long search for actual science data online) the carcinogenicity of second-hand smoke particles was so low as to be immeasurable. It's also claimed SHS causes cardiovascular problems. Perhaps ... lots of things can do that, like food and lack of exercise. Accounted-for in studies? Personally, I always smoke outdoors, where my SHS mixes with the exhaust of the gasoline and diesel vehicles driving by. They haven't been outlawed yet. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx#Health_and_environment_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx#Health_and_environment_eff...]
- vmception 5y agoThe point of these studies aren't to outlaw things, its to let people make more objective choices
- mechanical_bear 5y agoSecond hand smoke is cancer causing. https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/6067/cdc_6067_DS1.pdf https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/6067/cdc_6067_DS1.pdf
- Maursault 5y agoThe shocker is not that first hand smoke also is, but that natural tobacco is not remotely as deadly as what is in nearly all national brand cigarettes, and the obvious reason these products are so deadly is that a large number of carcinogens are added to the product intentionally to make nicotine more addictive. I always thought it was a strange outcome of the 90's cigarette co. court settlements that this practice, I believe specifically detailed for the court, wasn't eliminated (and notably the unpaid remainder of the fines were eliminated entirely in the mid-naughts).
- pigtailgirl 5y ago
- et-al 5y agoThe SF Chronicle article is a bit more colorful: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Bong-smoke-is-worse-than-secondhand-tobacco-17037945.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Bong-smoke-is-wo... > The research was done in the living room of an off-campus apartment of an undergraduate student who came up with the idea, according to Professor S. Katharine Hammond, who oversaw the study and co-wrote the report with graduate student Patton Khuu Nguyen. The subjects were students who supplied their own cannabis and bong of their choosing. They were not observed while partaking of the bong in the apartment. They were aware their recreational usage was being measured but remained anonymous throughout. > The experiment ran for two months in 2018 and served as the master’s project for Nguyen. Hammond, a tenured professor who has been at UC Berkeley for 28 years, was his faculty adviser.
- SauciestGNU 5y agoThis design of experiment is interesting. Although the conditions are extremely loosely controlled (thus leaving replication more difficult), I would expect the quality of the data to be higher since this is essentially gathering field-testing data.
- kn0where 5y agoI’m not going to claim that weed smoke is totally fine… but is all PM2.5 equally dangerous? Anyone with an air quality monitor near their kitchen can see that PM2.5 levels skyrocket when cooking. How do those particles compare to the ones in wildfire smoke or diesel exhaust? The statistics indicating that smoking weed doesn’t significantly raise lung cancer risk when controlling for users who also smoke tobacco, despite higher carcinogen levels in weed smoke, tells me our understanding has a long way to go.
- vmception 5y agoEdibles. I really wish cannabis was associated with consuming jello or chocolate, instead of smoking something. People, even dating apps, even doctors, ask "do you smoke weed", when they mean to ask "do you consume thc and cool with that" (okay doctors may be asking about lung cancer risk from smoking and other ways to fuck up your insurance premiums) I don't smoke anything Gummies though? Keep the supplies filled so, its the wrong question and wrong association
- whoopdeepoo 5y agoDry herb vaping is another option
- azemetre 5y agoWouldn't ingesting anything into your lungs be bad? How does vaping make it better?
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoTheoretically you aren’t getting the particulates from smoke. I assume it’s less harmful, but has it been studied?
- epgui 5y agoCaution: that's not exactly true. What you get is a different distribution of particulates. You'll get much less of the larger particulates, and you'll be inhaling mostly finer particulates. They cause a different pattern of tissue damage.
- whimsicalism 5y agoSource on this claim?
- epgui 5y ago
- eyelidlessness 5y agoDisclosure of biased background: in my recent past, I worked for a series of technology companies providing services to the legal cannabis industry across several emerging markets in US states. I have never particularly enjoyed consuming cannabis products recreationally, and very seldom partake more often than once every few years. If I do consume it, I generally prefer non-smoking methods with very low THC. I have been in the company of people who enjoy cannabis much more than I do for most if not all of my life. My interest in the issue is largely about social impact, and I’m motivated by reducing/eliminating incarceration and other punitive social consequences which I think are generally inappropriate. Okay with that out of the way… This is all good information to have, but I hope there will be studies that help contextualize it. This is a pretty good study of real world usage at an extreme, but it doesn’t reflect what I think is typical usage—at least over the long term, and at least given circumstances which allow more acceptable usage. Sure, there are people who sit around and do hours-long wicked bong rips with their friends or at parties. How often they do, or how much non-users are exposed, or for how prolonged a period of their lives, or how they change their behavior in more permissive environments… all of these would color the meaningfulness of this study’s findings in terms of overall health impact. As would knowing whether, and to what degree, less extreme/reduced usage and cessation reduces long term risk—and how consistent that is with similar changes to tobacco smoking activity. I know my anecdata isn’t more than that, but it’s been my experience that: - this usage pattern is more common in youth, generally in a party atmosphere, and generally either when scrutiny is limited more than usual or in low scrutiny environments; it tends to be something many long term cannabis users reduce or eliminate entirely as they mature - even among long term heavy users, this sort of extended social session becomes less common in more permissive environments (e.g. decriminalized or legalized, or even “lowest priority enforcement”) - exposure to this kind of excessive, prolonged usage is exceedingly uncommon for people who aren’t also consuming it firsthand It’s also a strong hunch but I’d need more information to be more confident that: reduction or elimination of this usage pattern likely tracks closely with the long term health outcomes of reduction/cessation of smoking tobacco. Why does all of that matter to me? Studies like this are good and helpful, but if they paint an incomplete picture which can exaggerate risk factors, they will be used to push back momentum on efforts to reduce the other risk factors. Incarcerating people for no good reason is not going to improve health outcomes. Continuing to do so disproportionately depending on social status (largely race and biological sex) won’t help either, for a probably unknowable set of other disparities. And it definitely won’t help addressing those disparities and the other harms they cause. Encouraging likely-to-be-safer casual users to hide their use probably won’t help either. Not that this study, or any, should be directly held to a standard of helping all or any of those. But these are my thoughts upon reading this earnestly, and honestly glad to see high profile cannabis research happening at all.
- ichugwindex 5y ago"Levels of PM2.5 were measured before, during, and after 8 cannabis social-smoking sessions in one 20-m2 household living room" Isn't the amount being smoked relevant? It seems to vaguely compare weed smoke to cigarette smoke without factoring in what normal usage looks like for each. How does this compare to burning incense? Seems like a poorly designed study.