Tobacco smoking has devastating effects on health. The smoke damages the lungs, resulting in a diminished ability of oxygen to enter the body. Smoke long enough and eventually you will get emphysema. Various chemicals in smoke enhance the development of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), leading to strokes and heart attacks. One of tobacco’s chemicals, nicotine, acts directly on the b...

When a fire occurs, minimum detection latency is crucial to minimizing damage and saving lives. Current smoke sensors inherently suffer from the transport delay of the smoke from the fire to the sensor. A video smoke detection system would not have this delay. Further, video is a volume sensor, not a point sensor. A point sensor looks at a point in space. That point may not be affected by smoke...

Introduction Smoke inhalation is the breathing in of the harmful gases, vapours, and particulate matter contained in smoke. Smoke inhalation typically occurs in victims of fire caught in structural fires. People trapped in fire may suffer from inhalation independent of receiving skin burns. However, the incidence of smoke inhalation increases with the percentage of total body surface burned.1 I...

BACKGROUND The development of whole smoke exposure systems have been driven by the fact that traditional smoke exposure techniques are based on the particulate phase of tobacco smoke and not the complete smoke aerosol. To overcome these challenges in this study, we used a Vitrocell® VC 10 whole smoke exposure system. For characterisation purposes, we determined smoke deposition in relationship ...

BACKGROUND Wood smoke inhalation causes severe ventilation and oxygenation abnormalities. We hypothesized that smoke inhalation would cause lung injury by 2 mechanisms: (1) direct tissue injury by the toxic chemicals in the smoke and (2) a mechanical shear-stress injury caused by alveolar instability (ie, alveolar recruitment/derecruitment). We further postulated that alveolar instability would...

Introduction: Tobacco smoke is involved in the pathogenesis of several diseases in different body systems. Saliva is the first body fluid that confront inhaled cigarette smoke which is injurious to the oral cavity and is associated with several oral diseases and cancer. The aim of our study was to evaluate the influence of smoking on the activity of alpha-amylase in the saliva of healthy smoker...

BACKGROUND A number of epidemiologic studies have suggested that every year environmental tobacco smoke (second-hand smoke) is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, mostly from heart disease, in the United States. Environmental tobacco smoke is composed mainly (80% to 85%) of aged and diluted sidestream smoke. The remainder is exhaled mainstream smoke. Among the thousands of compounds th...

College campus tobacco-free policies are an emerging trend. Between September 2013 and May 2014, we surveyed 1309 college students at 8 public 4-year institutions across California with a range of policies (smoke-free indoors only, designated outdoor smoking areas, smoke-free, and tobacco-free). Stronger policies were associated with fewer students reporting exposure to secondhand smoke or seei...

INTRODUCTION Given the high proportion of US adults living in multiunit housing (MUH) and the related risks of secondhand smoke, we examined correlates of having smoke-free MUH policies, level of support for such policies, and reactions to related messaging among a quota-based nonprobability sample of US adults. METHODS In 2013, 752 adult MUH residents were recruited through an online survey ...

A novel carbon filter has been developed which primarily reduces the amount of certain vapor phase constituents of tobacco smoke with greater efficiency than the charcoal filters of cigarettes currently in the market. In vitro indicators of genotoxic and cytotoxic potential were used to compare the cigarette smoke condensate (particulate phase) or whole cigarette smoke (vapor phase and particul...