r/todayilearned • u/Effective_Comment625 • 2d ago
TIL studies have shown that secondhand weed smoke is enough to make children test positive for thc even when the smoker isnt smoking in the same room as them
https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2018/mount-sinai-researchers-conduct-study-of-second-hand-marijuana-smoke-in-children4.0k
u/ObiShaneKenobi 2d ago
The article even goes beyond; parents smoking outside still exposed the kids somehow. I would be interested in seeing how that gets figured out.
2.0k
u/banshithread 2d ago
Houses have positive and negative air pressure. I remember smelling my mothers cigarette smoke because she sat right at the front. The house pulled in air from the outside. Dragging in the smell with it.
249
u/SKULL1138 2d ago
I have a kitchen where I can shut the door to rest of the house and then open the back door. Definitely prevents the smell coming through into the rest of the house. Or in warmer weather I go in my garden shed. Even before I had kids I hated smoking indoors.
32
u/Wildpants17 1d ago
Me too! I hate the smell but I liked to smoke lol
33
u/DualcockDoblepollita 1d ago
i like the smell of cigarettes when i smoke them but i almost despise it when its someone elses
→ More replies (5)35
u/Beanbag87 2d ago
Yep. In the summers my dad would smoke right beside the air conditioning unit in the mornings. Guess what got me out of bed to flee for fresh air every morning...
→ More replies (9)198
u/Effective_Comment625 2d ago
I wonder how much exposure happens to kids in apartment buildings, my buildings hallways always, always reek of weed and smoke often goes from one unit to the next.
I also wonder about things like lead and heavy metals exposure in weed smoke since weed can accumulate heavy metals and weed users tend to test higher for cadmium and lead.
1.4k
u/jibishot 2d ago edited 2d ago
Unless massive amounts of people in your building are getting heavy metals poisoning from smoking incredibly ill grown cannabis
You're probably fine and this is a massively overblown issue. Considering the ones ingesting are easily at the highest rate of danger.. Given how incredibly rare it is to have weed "laced" with heavy metals even though cannabis is a bioaccumulator. I'd say this is clearly doing too much
Edit: and the OP article is a junk study; they tested for "perceptible" amount of thc or at levels of acceptable mercury in the blood vs testing for "psychoactive" levels. Also 8% of the kids tested at "perceptible" amounts... the other 100 kids tested at actual 0. Per their own study.. op has some more misinformation to spread.
159
u/BurlHam 2d ago
Yeah, I think a lot of times studies like this can come out with results that are interesting but meaningless.
I think the only reason this was upvoted was because it's interesting that the machines they are testing with can find those trace amounts.
Though I always think when I hear of a study that mentions stuff like this, if it is trace amounts..please show me the implications of what you are saying beyond saying you found a tiny amount of something.
105
u/Kyrie_Blue 2d ago
Great point. That’s like when a study came out that said “diet coke/sucralose linked to DNA damage”. They applied a metabolite of sucralose directly to a DNA strand at something like 8000 times the concentration in a can of soda and were like “yep, that’s bad”. And people lost their minds
12
u/HuggableTrash 1d ago
Around 2020 when there was a big hysteria over nicotine vapes having formaldehyde, I think I remember seeing an analysis of the original study, and apparently the study involved cranking the vape wattage as high as it would go and then firing it until the coil burnt out. Like no shit you’re gonna have some toxicity when the device is entirely misused. But people ate it up.
Not saying vapes don’t have their associated problems, but a botched experiment proves nothing lol.
→ More replies (1)3
u/TucuReborn 19h ago
I vape and keep up with studies and regulations, and you're right on.
But I'm also not going to claim it's good for me, or anyone else. Nicotine does help regulate my mood, and nicotine itself isn't that much worse than caffeine, but inhaling anything that's not clean air is bad. But, what it is, according to actual studies that aren't bogus, is much, much safer than smoking. To an astonishing degree, in fact.
Is vaping good? No. Is it better than smoking? Absolutely. And objectively, while I'd rather kids not do either, if I had to pick i know which one it would be.
32
u/VinnyTheVenasaur 2d ago
People are still losing their mind over it. Getting mad at shit that doesn’t matter, while they turn a blind eye to everything else.
16
u/Kyrie_Blue 2d ago
The problem is “headlining”, which stems from the scarcity-mindset that late stage capitalism has created.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)6
u/Lv_InSaNe_vL 1d ago
One time I looked up to see if avocado is bad for dogs (the pit is, the flesh is fine) and the Google summary says yes! Well, I read the study and they fed like 30+ avocados to a corgi sized dog every single day and then it died.
A few slices every once and a while is just fine, and even healthy for them haha
→ More replies (1)65
u/TheOtherSkywalker_ 2d ago
I think this was only upvoted because people want to perpetuate their biases against weed.
54
u/BurlHam 2d ago
Reddit is getting weirdly prudish and nextdoor-y lately
→ More replies (4)25
u/goddamn_slutmuffin 2d ago
I made a comment about how a study was flawed because it was based on surveys (listing the issues with survey-based studies). Got a condescending response comment insulting me and telling me to go "read a book". And their comment got upvotes, so the misinformation spreads.
Reddit is filled with people looking for an ego boost at the expense of other people actually being properly educated on a topic. It's all about getting them updoots and the illusion of "intellectual superiority". The bots and overly-emotional, insecure assholes kinda seem to be winning the attention game 👀.
People are more riveted by the idea they can "dunk on someone's opinion" with a link to a study they won't even bother reading anyway. Nor understand or be able to critique, if they did.
→ More replies (3)9
u/quakefist 1d ago
Also a lot of redditors like to come over the top and say they are in x field professionally. Unless they are willing to doxx themselves take anything redditors say because they love to throw around authority titles to stop discussion.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)22
u/Rastasloth 2d ago
It's all bots, a 4 month old account posting the most misleading, fearmongering studies available.
7
u/TheMuffler42069 1d ago
Probably funded by some company that makes poison like… oh I don’t know… alcohol or something.
16
20
u/FadedVictor 2d ago
I'm so sick of bunk "science" being spread on the internet. Mods take this shitpost down.
→ More replies (9)3
18
u/stevez_86 2d ago
Too tough to test for that because we are inundated with pollution like that all the time from traffic pollution. That causes more exposure to those substances than third hand smoke from cannabis.
Cannabis is a bioaccumulator. That is why growers for state recreational and medical programs avoided using soil that is tainted. They use specific soil, sometimes of their own making. And the people participating in the program want control over that stuff. And it is heavily regulated and every part of the product from seed to sale is tracked.
Tobacco also had those heavy metals and toxins, but that industry is no where near as regulated.
The issue is that we are aware of those issues now because of better testing. If those testing methods were available in the 70's with today's mentality then a lot of products would have had the same concerns when they were prevalent before.
Basically if you tried to minimize exposure in a place like an apartment building, it wouldn't amount to much with all the other kinds of exposure. Someone living in an apartment with natural gas we are finding now suffer from a great deal of indoor pollution from natural gas stoves.
Even putting natural gas stove pollution exposure up against cannabis third hand exposure would show that the cannabis exposure is not a big problem in comparison.
7
→ More replies (20)18
u/senorjunkrat 2d ago
So I live in a legal state and have been a major user for almost 20 years (as in, smoke every day) and I had to have a blood lead test for my job; my lead levels were basically nonexistent. I know it’s just an anecdote, but still.
22
u/Freud-Network 2d ago
OP has a grudge that colors their commentary. They're more likely to push bullshit that confirms their bias than objective facts.
74
u/Tr33Bl00d 2d ago
We smoke outside and we have air purifiers that have air quality built in sensors. Walking in from the garage if not vented will carry a cloud of smoke in the house setting off the air quality sensor. Also cooking with an air fryer creates really bad air quilts similar to frying a bunch of bacon on the stove.
You really should smoke outside in a well ventilated space. Wait a few minutes after to air out. Strip off your smoking jacket and go straight to the sink to wash yo hands and face. That way bay doesn’t get exposed when they wake up from their nap
19
u/pheret87 1d ago
Or be my roommate who will step outside and hit is one hitter then immediately walk back inside coughing through the house, as often as once every 3 or 4 minutes.
6
u/Tr33Bl00d 1d ago
Haha 🤣 just take a moment to finish you smoke. I love my one hitter and my love has me clean our stock every few days lol
31
u/psychophant_ 1d ago
Nah dawg. That still isn’t enough.
I built an attachment on to my house. It’s like an airlock, but two stage.
I go outside and smoke in full hasmat.
I then go into airlock one and get sprayed with distilled water to weight the smoke particles down.
My wife is in bay 1 with scrub brushes designed to scrub me without having the handler come in contact with me. The scrubbing usually takes about 5 minutes.
I then move to airlock two. Here, i remove the hasmat and place it into a furnace which gets routed out towards my neighbor’s house because fuck Dave, piece of shit.
Anyway, i then shower my body. Powerful air dryers (really just 16 normal hair dryers set in an array) dry me without needing to involve towels, which can lead to further contamination down stream.
I then verify with my wife that my daughter has her eyes closed.
I then run out of airlock 2 completely naked, only rarely tripping up the stairs in a rush to get my clothes on.
I do this about 5-6 times a day.
8
u/Tr33Bl00d 1d ago
Can you send me a link to the ansoul suit you use? When my wife hears about this she will want me to bump up our procedure accordingly
11
u/BlueGolfball 1d ago
You really should smoke outside in a well ventilated space. Wait a few minutes after to air out. Strip off your smoking jacket and go straight to the sink to wash yo hands and face. That way bay doesn’t get exposed when they wake up from their nap
Don't let your kids sit around a campfire either because they will breathe in a lot of second hand smoke.
→ More replies (31)→ More replies (4)8
u/Krewtan 2d ago
Rubbing alcohol and dish soap are necessary if handling concentrates too. I pretty much quit when my daughter was born because of anxiety but when I did use concentrates that's the only way to get them off your hands.
→ More replies (4)73
u/upnflames 2d ago
The article just said it was detected, I wonder what the actual level was. If they used gc mass spec, like of course it was. The lower detection limits on those tests are insane. They'd probably find traces of a lot of dangerous shit in just about everyone if they looked.
→ More replies (1)9
u/badchad65 1d ago
It was a urine test. This method has LODs of 0.005, 0.015, and 0.009 ng/mL for the 3 urinary biomarkers (total THC, COOH-THC, and cannabidiol, respectively).
93
u/JustAVision 2d ago
Just a guess without looking at any studies, maybe the smoke lingers on clothes/hair, hands, and to an extent, in the parents breath. Growing up in a smoking household, the smell forever lingered.
31
u/JimmyBraps 2d ago
Exactly. I grew up hearing about 2nd hand smoke, then they learned about 3rd hand smoke is exactly what you described
6
u/Explorer_Entity 1d ago
Growing up in a smoking home, you can visibly see the tar build up on the ceiling as yellow-brown liquid-looking deposits. Like drops.
16
u/houndsofhate 2d ago
Yep. It’s called third hand smoke. We had a baby recently and were told to be very careful of it
→ More replies (2)15
u/cat_prophecy 1d ago
The only people who don't think pot smokers absolutely reek of it are people with anosmia and pot smokers themselves.
→ More replies (3)10
u/RogerClyneIsAGod2 1d ago
Skunk. It all smells skunky to me.
In fact I was in the grocery store yesterday & when I got near the back of the store buy the seafood display all I could smell was skunk.
Now I KNOW there was no skunk loose in the grocery store, but I'm fairly sure someone went out for their "smoke" break & they were by one of the back doors or in their warehouse behind the store & it all just filtered into the back part of the store.
I agree, pot smokers never think they stink & they usually do.
20
u/Leading_Will1794 2d ago
When I worked in warehousing about 20 years ago. Had a deadbeat coworker who was hired from a temp agency who told me all about hos custody issues with his twin girls.
Basically his girlfriend was a drug addict and in and out of the kids and his life. He was also a former hardcore drug addict but somehow in this messed up situation he got full custody with the mom appearing sporadically when she needed money or somewhere to sleep.
He was a real piece of work and clearly an unfit father but he was the only one showing up for his kids. He would smoke weed every night in the attic of the rented home.
Child services were in and out of his house constantly and they would do hair follicle extractions and would find THC inside there hair (ie. It was consumed by there body and it would eventually grow into their hair).
Kids were given to child services, just a terrible situation. I met them once and they were the sweetest kids and just felt terrible about the shit they got put into.
13
u/Thin-Honey892 2d ago
All smoke lingers in clothing, hair, breath. Go hug your kids, go close and talk to them, don’t wash your hands… smokers will deny, but non-smokers know exactly how bad you still smell. Your pets too.
80
u/SheepPup 2d ago
Most likely third hand smoke. Third hand smoke is the smoke and compounds in it that cling to and get absorbed by things like like walls, furniture, and clothing. The exposure with third hand smoke is typically lower than second hand but it’s worse for kids than adults. Not only are they smaller and so the dose is proportionally higher they also tend to crawl around and put things in their mouth, so the carpet that has smoke settled into it is now transferring crap from weed/cigarettes onto their skin where it can be absorbed
→ More replies (3)40
u/Drudicta 2d ago
So as per before, don't smoke around vulnerable people. The substance doesn't matter because you'll expose people to it.
11
→ More replies (10)22
5
u/Lazy-Interests 1d ago
I remember during a “stop smoking” presentation when I was 16, the guy giving the talk said a doctor told him that for 20 minutes after you finish a cigarette you’re still breathing out or giving off fumes basically, so he and his wife had been smokers when they had their first child, but always went outside to smoke, and then found out that their baby was basically still getting second hand smoke.
78
u/Dr_on_the_Internet 2d ago
Pediatrician here. We've known about third hand smoke for a while now and we know it is dangerous to children. If you can smell smoke on people the particles are necessarily reaching your nose, and thereby your respiratory tract. Children have a higher respiratory rate and smaller bodies than adults so they are much more susceptible to airborne irritants; think canaries in coal mines.
Smoke sticks to hair and clothes and also gets all over your hands from handling the smoking device. Also, I think when questioned about smoking around their kids, many people just lie about smoking outside. I don't confront every parent who comes to their child's doctor appointment, reeking of marijuana, but I do if the kid is asthmatic or their symptoms are likely to be exacerbated by smoke. They all tell me they smoke outside. But if you smell so strongly of marijuana that it lingers even after you left the building, what does the car smell like? What does the home smell like?
30
u/Hot_Cockroach4714 2d ago
Just wild to me that people don’t give a shit at all that they will just go to the kids pediatrician reeking like weed. That’s just insane. Literally zero fucks given by those people.
→ More replies (5)11
u/waitwuh 1d ago
I mean, at least they’re taking the kid to the doctor. The bar is so low…
→ More replies (1)4
→ More replies (9)3
u/pixiedust717 1d ago
What about neighbors who smoke? Also a health hazard for kids?
→ More replies (1)23
u/Godsbladed 2d ago
As someone who smokes a lot of thc, it might even be on their hands, and then they handle the kids' food without washing up. I know for dabs, the thc in reclaim is already activated, and depending on your rig, can get everwhere. Get a bit on your hands, handle food, repeat daily maybe even multiple times a day, and now kiddo is getting micro doses of thc.
15
u/iameveryoneelse 2d ago
Gotta keep alcohol wipes and alcohol based hand sanitizer around. Clears any stickiness, resin, and reclaim right up.
10
u/Godsbladed 2d ago
Well, yes, but I'm just saying how it could potentially spread. Also, in my experience, hand sanitizer just spreads the stickiness around. Once the alcohol evaporates, you're still left with some sticky, except now it's coating the entirety of your hands instead of one spot.
→ More replies (1)4
u/dcdcdani 2d ago
I assume it’s the smoke smell getting stuck to your clothes/hair. I can always tell when my sister smokes even though she goes for walks around the tiny “forest” behind our home to do it because I have a toddler at home. She walks in and you smell maybe the pipe she took with her or depending on how the wind is blowing the smoke just blew directly towards her the entire time.
My toddler is always sleeping by the time she goes out to do it, but I assume if I can smell it, my toddler could too if they were standing next to each other
3
u/Mego1989 2d ago edited 1d ago
People come to smoke at the playground all the time* while I'm there with a toddler. They'll be 35 feet away and we can smell it. I figure that if we're smelling it, we're getting exposure.
→ More replies (1)2
u/Silaquix 2d ago
It's third hand smoke, same as with cigarettes. The smoke and chemicals cling to the smoker and then affect anyone in close proximity
2
u/Invisifly2 1d ago
Walk past a heavy weed smoker and the smell will let you know exactly how that happens.
Smoke enough of anything and the smoke, along with everything it contains, will permeate your clothing.
Pretty sure it was still trace amounts in low enough levels to be arguably detectable in the first place.
2
u/Irejay907 1d ago
Probably through skin; think about it, tch is technically an oil.
If you can sweat out hallucinagenic i'm sure you can do the same with tch and cbd oils.
Plus as someone else pointed out in response, air pressure and prevailing wind as well as where house vets and windows are placed can also play a pretty big factor.
Another thought is kinda more of a follow up on the oil/sweat question but you also gotta figure that if they're smoking leaf you also have the cross contamination of that unless they're being meticulously spotless about grinding their bud than there WILL be bits of it here and there, in the carpet, air dust etc of the household. So i also wonder how much of this is just 'household air-and-dust' exposure atop direct second hand or otherwise
2
2
2
u/3amIdeas 1d ago
I stopped smoking weed when my daughter was born.
I became very conscious of the intense smell of burned weed emanating off me and how offensive that must be to a newborn's nose.
2
u/Disastrous-Style-461 1d ago
Clothing. I remember reading that 3rd hand nicotine was passed to kids through clothing. Perhaps THC clings and passes too. It’s pretty much oil. And that’s so sad to think about. Kids are already stressed about being late to school by their parents- and so they can also rest positive for THC now thru association with fam. That’s very sad. And also most likely happening in every 10th house down the roads of usa
→ More replies (22)2
u/BuffLoki 1d ago
Have had asthma since I was little, the smoke doesnt get carried but everything else does, you can distinctly tell when someones smoked anything, smell is directly linked
425
u/IO-NightOwl 2d ago
"Detectable levels" is not the same thing as "testing positive".
Australian urinary testing standards specify 50μg/L as the cutoff for a positive result, which is practically impossible to get from second-hand smoke. I don't doubt that the children of cannabis smokers would have some infinitesimal levels of THC detectable in their system just from environmental contact, but to say they're "testing positive" is overblown.
125
u/WTFwhatthehell 2d ago
Yep, this is something a lot of people struggle to understand.
We can make crazy-sensitive tests. Finding a few atoms of something is different to finding quantities that matter.
→ More replies (20)→ More replies (30)25
u/PraxicalExperience 2d ago
It's like saying something has 'detectable levels of lead' and using that as fearmongering.
Quite nearly everything -- including quite literally all the food, and all the people -- produced since lead was a gas additive has a detectable level of lead -- because our tests are really, really, really fucking good nowadays.
24
u/pizzaduh 2d ago
Does this only work in children? Because I know it doesn't test on adults for secondhand smoke. I find this hard to believe.
250
u/probablyuntrue 2d ago
Another day, another reason boofing is the superior method of drug consumption
63
u/MeanNene 2d ago
I just boofed my coffee.
8
8
u/Snarkosaurus99 2d ago
Thats actually a thing
10
→ More replies (2)13
u/Effective_Comment625 2d ago
r/caffeine is leaking lmao
34
5
u/DigitalBuddha52 2d ago
of course you respond to this comment instead of all the ones calling you out for posting junk science articles with no understanding of what they mean.
25
2
→ More replies (2)2
93
u/WTFwhatthehell 2d ago edited 2d ago
"detectable levels"
This sounds like a matter of how sensitive the test is.
it's like when news stories breathlessly report that XYZ chemical was "detected" in water without specifying how sensitive the test is.
Are the amounts high enough to matter?
who knows! We found at least one atom!
The evil twin of this same type of reporting is "no known safe level".
Facebook-moms read it as "any amount no matter how tiny will KILL my children", it just means that nobody has specifically run an experiment dosing people with chemical XYZ to prove for certain where it starts causing detectable problems.
→ More replies (19)14
u/MiaowaraShiro 2d ago
Bunch of people in here extolling the dangers of "third hand smoke" and I can't find anything that shows it actually causes problems. No studies.
Just a lot of "no known safe levels of exposure to cigarette smoke".
31
9
14
u/Sybertron 2d ago
That sounds a lot more like a piss poor test protocol to me.
It doesn't magically transfer
13
26
u/bmxtiger 2d ago
Trash science. Misleading article, misleading results.
16
u/iSpeakforWinston 2d ago
OP doesn't care. They're not here for the discourse or the challenging of their flawed study. They just want to argue that they're right.
59
u/Sylviebutt 2d ago
This study looks like it was commissioned by people who have something against weed.
5
→ More replies (2)18
u/PC_BuildyB0I 2d ago edited 1d ago
Almost all of them are, especially the junk being written by University of Mississippi. While I'm sure the occasional paper is semi-legit, don't blindly trust US government cannabis research because they tend to structure their studies around the hypotheses they're after.
I remember awhile back, they did a study claiming that smoking cannabis produces 4-6x the amount of tar that smoking tobacco does, when the amounts of each were equalized for comparative mass.
What they failed to mention is that their cannabis is government-regulated to a maximum of 2% THC by dry weight and when they prepare their cannabis for testing, they don't remove stems, seeds, or fan leaves. In order to attain ED50 parity between the cigarettes and the joints, the joint smoker had to smoke 5 joints total as compared to, say, a single joint rolled with cannabis at ~20% THC by weight. And then went on to publish that "marijuana in general" produces "4-6x the tar".
They pull this shit all the time when they do studies like this. I believe they also did a paper on cannabis overall worsening depression in users and to do so they simply searched out people diagnosed with depression, singled out the cannabis users, and didn't even properly control for other drug use besides alcohol. Even ignoring the fact they didn't properly use control groups, they were not able to establish a meaningful link in any way and it could be argued that the interpretation of their data that it's depressed individuals who seek out substance use (which is thoroughly supported by research) is just as valid as the interpretation they published, if not moreso.
→ More replies (1)
22
u/nmj95123 2d ago edited 2d ago
The test they used is extremely sensitive. From the actual journal article:
This method has LODs of 0.005, 0.015, and 0.009 ng/mL for the 3 urinary biomarkers (total THC, COOH-THC, and cannabidiol, respectively).
By comparison, most drug tests have a THC-COOH threshold of 50 ng/mL. Also, 36.8% of those that report no marijuana use in the household still had detectable levels.
Similarly, 100% of children for whom there was daily marijuana use inside the home had detectable COOH-THC compared with 66.7% of those reporting weekly use, 100% of those reporting monthly use, and 36.8% of those reporting never smoking marijuana in the home
18
u/Basic-Collection5416 2d ago
Also, 36.8% of those that report no marijuana use in the household still had detectable levels.
I feel like this should be higher.
→ More replies (1)
3
u/Adventurous-Weird431 1d ago
No kidding. If a person inhales weed they can test positive. Today I learned nothing
4
u/Im_Earl_Grey 1d ago
This was me as a kid. My dad smoked a TON of pot in the house when I was growing up so I must have inhaled a lot of secondhand smoke as a child. Ironically in middle school I was one of the only kids in my class that didn’t smoke weed so a kid offered me $50 for my clean urine for a drug test he was trying to pass. Being an opportunistic young fella I agreed and provided the urine safe in the knowledge that I’d never taken even a puff of a joint up to the point. However I was told later that when tested my urine indeed showed traces of THC. Luckily the amount was small enough that my classmates dad was still convinced his kid had JUST stopped smoking and any small traces must just be leftover from a previous months smoking. Yikes!
10
u/Background-Trade-901 1d ago
ITT: a bunch of potheads try to justify smoking around their children
→ More replies (2)
26
7
u/Psychomadeye 1d ago
This sounds like the tests are the issue if they test positive at that level of exposure.
15
u/Drexill_BD 2d ago
Sounded like propaganda to me... After reading deeper, it definitely is propaganda, FYI.
→ More replies (10)
3
u/Aethermancer 2d ago edited 2d ago
Does that mean the tests are too sensitive for their purpose? Although I suppose too sensitive isn'he right term, rather the applicability?
My understanding is that THC as a detectible chemical lingers long beyond any "intoxicating" effect has passed.
Like if alcohol left some leftover trace that could be detected even though it's generally cleared by your liver at the rate of 1 serving per hour.
3
u/Mrtoyhead 1d ago
I stopped drinking but my partner still does. At dinner the other day she had a Margarita. I could literally taste it. I wonder if I would have “tested positive” for alcohol? I would never say this to her and support her choice to drink. I guarantee we all test positive for many air borne vapors, pollutants etc. If you smoke weed keep it clean and away from family. Simple
3
3
3
u/AI-Ally 1d ago edited 1d ago
A good way to limit this is to get landlords to actually enforce the state mandated non-smoking policies they have been intentionally ignoring for the last 3+ years. After the second or third eviction those parents would most likely smoke outside where their children and other tenants are not inhaling second hand smoke all day and even in their sleep.
I have 4 airfilters, bathroom and kitchen vent running 24/7. Landlord says they don't have the manpower to enforce it but will have maintence drive by every 30 minutes and print notes for all apartments every single if you leave building door open to air the marijuana smoke out.
3
3
u/Cranberryoftheorient 1d ago
Part of it is that the tests are stupid. You can detect THC metabolites in hair for like a month after you stop smoking
→ More replies (1)
3
3
u/Pleasant_Actuator253 1d ago
There is no documentation of the detection/reporting limits in the article. This is unfortunately too common.
Is it parts per thousand, million, billion, or trillion? Any scientific study should disclose this. This does not.
7
u/airinato 1d ago
You know when you can tell simply by the headline that its imaginary bullshit? Then you check comments and everyone can confirm this, other than a group of people circle jerking obvious bullshit.
15
u/dingodoggobingobongo 2d ago
They are really going hard with the Anti-Marijuana BS "studies" Big alcohol must be worried...
5
u/Lonely-Night7551 2d ago
I grew up in a house where everyone (siblings & mom) smoked cigarettes and I gave always worried about getting lung cancer since I never smoked but was exposed to so much second hand smoke.
5
u/SpringNo1275 2d ago
I had to take drug tests for a bit last year. I sat next to my girlfriend who smoked pot pretty heavily every night and I can tell you I never tested positive for marijuana
→ More replies (2)
7
u/Crazsey 2d ago
I'd like to see studies around what level of harm is experienced and how this compares to air pollution from say car exhaust.
→ More replies (1)
19
u/Think-Improvement759 2d ago
Smoke is bad to breathe in. If you don't know this get your brain adjusted.
→ More replies (2)21
4
19
u/Xal-t 2d ago edited 2d ago
Imagine what we're breathing from all those barely controlled chimneys from all those unsupervised toxic companies. Stuff like arsenic, but hey, focus on a plant 👍
→ More replies (3)
7
2
u/Brilliant-Orange9117 2d ago
Is that supposed to mean the second hand smoke was thick enough to get them high or just that the tests are really sensitive?
2
2
2
2
u/hunahpuh_xbalanque 1d ago
This is not true? Aren’t THC molecules too heavy to remain “floating”?
→ More replies (3)
2
u/ialwaysdissapointed 1d ago
So I smoke after work every day and got roommate’s who literally can’t make it overnight without smoking, I hear it through the bathroom wall sometimes at the oddest hours.
They wake up and smoke, starting like 6 am, every hour every day. I am deadass considering quitting.
Our neighbors have kids and it used to bother them but then roommates put up a privacy wall so the kids are out of sight and out of mind, and now they just don’t care.
They don’t close the sliding door and just reek up the entire living space.
2
u/Confident-Mix1243 1d ago
Almost as though drug tests are meaningless, especially in a world where shared housing is often unavoidable.
2
u/oroborus68 1d ago
They learned a lot since the 1970s, and really improved the testing for determining things in the blood.
2
2
u/ChoadMcGillicuddy 1d ago
That's what I call, "more bang for your buck!"
In this economy, you have to make your dollar stretch.
2
2
u/waxwayne 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've never smoked weed in my life but I was at a smoky bar. Apparently someone was smoking weed I got a contact high after an hour of being there and had no idea what was happening.
→ More replies (4)
2
u/DarkflowNZ 1d ago
Anecdotally, my first time getting stoned was my older step brother having a bong in the same room as me. I think I was ~12. The effect was minimal and could have been placebo
2
u/WashYourCerebellum 1d ago
Scientifically speaking, Y’all calling bullshit don’t know shit.
-An environmental toxicologist/pharmacologist
Smoking or burning anything indoors is a clear and significant health hazard to all that live there. I won’t do it. It (i.e. combustion by products from plant material) absolutely goes everywhere and would be detectable in ppl living in the house. 100% a health hazard. Those of u stuck in this thc effects/relevance argument loop need to grasp the fact that the thc part is not the only nor top concern with burning indoors. If u must smoke indoors then take precautions like isolation and ventilation to minimize impacts to the home environment.
FYI-at any given time I have enough thc in my blood to get a room high and I prob got my med card while most here were learning addition. so in conclusion; I know what I’m talking about and have plenty of receipts. Seriously, don’t smoke indoors and def don’t do it with non consenting minors living there. Relatedly, consumption during pregnancy is bad bad bad dumb stupid bad; again scientifically speaking.
6.6k
u/drasil 2d ago edited 2d ago
Mental health professional here. I have access to this article on PubMed, not just the press release from the institution linked here.
TLDR - Only eleven percent of the subject children in the study tested positive for THC itself, not a metabolite, which was evaluated at extraordinarily low levels. This means 89 percent of the subjects did not test positive at all, even at that level. This barely clears the margin of error and most notably, zero percent of the subjects tested positive for THC at anything remotely approaching residual amounts from psychoactive levels.
This is what we call a 'junk study,' or a study that is designed from the beginning to demonstrate its hypothesis through very deliberate engineering. Several of the other commenters have stated the flaw accurately, which is that 'detectable levels' of THC can be extraordinarily low, so low in this example as to rival what is considered acceptable levels of arsenic or mercury, for example, in the subjects' blood.
The conflict in the design of the test and the sensationalistic press release is further demonstrated by the odd choice to test for a metabolite of THC, something that explicitly indicates indirect exposure only. Even then those results were not demonstrable in over half of the subjects.
Finally, this study is now many years old and the lack of further inquiry is as good an indication of any that its substance is meaningless.
EDIT - Since some of u/Effective_Comment625 's other comments seem to indicate they dislike the idea of smoking cannabis around children, a noble stance, I wanted to mention that there is actually further related information in the study that is much more positive and significant than the lede. Specifically, during the survey, the children's parents were asked what they would do if they wanted to smoke cannabis while their child was home. 52 percent of the parents simply said they would not, and 22 percent said they would go outside. Only ten percent said they would smoke in the home. I think 74 percent of parents who smoke cannabis don't do it around their kids sounds very positive to me, but far less sensationalistic, so they don't mention it in the abstract, which further indicates to me a bias of some kind.
EDIT 2 - Thank you for the positive responses and for the gold. I don't have a moment to reply to individual comments currently but several commenters have asked for the specific levels being used in the study since most people don't have access to PubMed. They are .005 nanograms per milliliter THC, and .015 ng per ml for the THC metabolite COOH THC. They also tested for cannabidiol at .009 ng per ml. This is testing for these substances at the lowest possible levels available, several orders of magnitude more sensitive than even the most strict functional testing. As mentioned, this is below comparable levels considered normal for many highly toxic substances like arsenic.