When the first-hand doesn't know what the second-hand is doing...

Posted by Ann W over at VGIF, from WFSA.com (whoever they are):

TUESDAY, Feb. 2 (HealthDay News) -- In addition to the risks associated with directly inhaling cigarette smoke, smokers also face significant risk from their own secondhand smoke, researchers say.

The finding, published online Jan. 29 in Environmental Health, challenges the widely held belief that the threat posed to smokers by secondhand smoke is negligible. The study focused on newsstand agents in Genoa, Italy...

Piccardo and her colleagues concluded that secondhand smoke could have a major impact on smokers' health. For example, smoking 14 cigarettes a day results in secondhand smoke exposure that's equivalent to smoking an extra 2.6 cigarettes, they found.

"Both active and passive smoking contributions should always be considered in studies about health of active smokers," Piccardo said.

I am speechless in the face of such an impeccable chain of logic. Smoking 14 cigarettes a day causes as much exposure as smoking 16.6 cigarettes a day. I suppose the only way for the newsstand agents to protect themselves is to employ a non-smoking assistant to breathe in those extra 2.6 cigarettes' worth of smoke. Or something.

Now I think about it, doesn't the newsstand agent also suffer from third-hand smoke, as his clothes are contaminated, which increases his effective consumption to 17 cigarettes a day? And if he catches a reflection of himself smoking in the window, he's suffering from fourth-hand smoke, bringing his effective consumption to 17.2 a day, and so on.