Simply sitting in a cinema to watch a movie can expose people to the equivalent of one to 10 cigarettes’ worth of secondhand smoke, according to a new chemical analysis.
Research has already shown that cigarette smoke releases a host of chemicals that are harmful to humans. Both the smoker and people exposed to the secondhand smoke can suffer negative health effects from these substances, which include benzene, formaldehyde, and toulene. While legislation has cut down on where people can smoke in public, smokers still bring these chemicals with them via their clothing and belongings and release them into the environment, a phenomenon scientists call thirdhand smoke. This new study quantifies the impact that thirdhand smoke can have.
“This represents significant but poorly understood health risks to nonsmokers and a source of reactive chemicals indoors,” Drew Gentner, one of the study’s authors from Yale University, said in a press conference. “So, while questions for scientists and policymakers remain, it is clear that the myriad of chemicals from cigarette smoke do not remain isolated to where they’re smoked.”
The researchers collected measurements at a cinema complex in Mainz, Germany in January and February 2017 in a well-ventilated theater. They used a portable version of a machine called a proton transfer mass spectrometer, along with further lab techniques, to determine the concentrations and identities of the chemicals in the air. The theater showed four or five movies per day during the sampling time, and the researchers specifically monitored the air during the G-rated movie Wendy and the R-rated movies Resident Evil and Irre Helden. The average audience size was approximately the same fo
