[HN Gopher] Fine Particulate Matter Exposure from Secondhand Can...
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       Fine Particulate Matter Exposure from Secondhand Cannabis Bong
       Smoking
        
       Author : WaitWaitWha
       Score  : 31 points
       Date   : 2022-03-31 20:54 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (jamanetwork.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (jamanetwork.com)
        
       | h2odragon wrote:
       | Bong 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 wrote:
       | If 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 wrote:
         | Added: 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!
        
           | gmfawcett wrote:
           | Insightful! While it's a bit old-fashioned, you can also
           | reduce your nicotine intake by mixing every cigarette with a
           | litre of vodka.
        
             | pempem wrote:
             | I died. Too funny.
        
         | emerged wrote:
         | Dry flower is more than "slightly" lower risk, I think.
         | 
         | Especially at lower temperature.
        
           | lbotos wrote:
           | Sure, 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 wrote:
           | Honestly the lack of research publicly available
           | investigating dry flower cannabis vaping makes me sad.
           | There's basically nothing.
        
       | ttyp3 wrote:
       | Tobacco 2.0, awaiting suppression from the Cannabis Industrial
       | Complex.
        
       | porbelm wrote:
       | Well 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 wrote:
         | While 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.
        
       | et-al wrote:
       | The SF Chronicle article is a bit more colorful:
       | 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.
        
       | 8bitsrule wrote:
       | According 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_eff...]
        
         | vmception wrote:
         | The point of these studies aren't to outlaw things, its to let
         | people make more objective choices
        
       | vmception wrote:
       | Edibles.
       | 
       | 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
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | quickthrowman wrote:
         | The duration of edibles can be trying, even for experienced
         | smokers. I can't eat edibles after 5 PM on a weekday or I'm
         | still high when I wake up.
        
         | 01100011 wrote:
         | Eating edibles allows your liver to get a pass at the THC
         | before your brain, and it converts it to 11-hydroxy-THC which
         | is more psychoactive. It is also much, much easier to overdose
         | with edibles and that is a very unfun experience. I am an
         | extremely experienced smoker/eater/grower/etc and when I
         | screwed up some edible calculations and overdosed I almost
         | called 911. It is only my absolute faith that THC has never
         | killed anyone(directly) that kept me from freaking out.
        
           | blueprint wrote:
           | how much did you take?
        
           | ptudan wrote:
           | I knew a guy in college who was super straight laced, but
           | went to Amsterdam and got convinced to try weed, in the form
           | of a giant pastry, for the first time. I have no idea how
           | much was in it but he got so freaked out that he had serious
           | trauma and long lasting effects from it.
        
             | pempem wrote:
             | In fairness wouldn't this be controlled by simply providing
             | more information about the consumable amount or creating
             | lower dose edibles?
             | 
             | It feels like these anecdotes, while very real, would
             | equate to an unfathomable amount of smoking and so there
             | needs to be more information to allow a consumer to
             | understand the amount they should consume bc their body
             | isn't physically restricting them
        
         | whoopdeepoo wrote:
         | Dry herb vaping is another option
        
           | azemetre wrote:
           | Wouldn't ingesting anything into your lungs be bad? How does
           | vaping make it better?
        
             | whimsicalism wrote:
             | Tar, carcinogens - all much less present in dry herb
             | vaping.
             | 
             | There aren't longitudinal studies on this really though,
             | and no amount of inhaling not air into your lungs is safe.
        
               | Jeff_Brown wrote:
               | Cooling the smoke might be part of the purpose of the
               | water in a bong. Similarly for the long tubes on houkas.
        
             | epgui wrote:
             | Yes, pretty much anything that goes into your lungs is bad.
             | Lungs are incredibly fragile. This is especially so if
             | whatever you're inhaling is hot (eg.: water vapour, smoke
             | from any source...).
        
               | whimsicalism wrote:
               | Source on the heat/water vapour claim?
        
               | epgui wrote:
               | Oof, a pathology class from 10 years ago, and this is
               | more based on first principles than research findings.
               | I'll see if I can't dig up something.
        
             | amanaplanacanal wrote:
             | Theoretically you aren't getting the particulates from
             | smoke. I _assume_ it's less harmful, but has it been
             | studied?
        
               | epgui wrote:
               | Caution: 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.
        
         | Nuzzerino wrote:
         | In 2014 I ended up in the hospital due to an abnormally high
         | concentration of material in an edible. Slept through 90 degree
         | heat and had potassium depletion. Woke up and immediately
         | couldn't control my muscles and had arrhythmia. Thought I was
         | dying. Never touched an edible again.
        
           | dj_mc_merlin wrote:
           | Surely the problem was not the edibles if sleeping in 90
           | degree weather paralyzed you? I've sweated large amounts in
           | my sleep, especially while sick, never have I considered I
           | could sweat out enough potassium to paralyze me. Were you
           | eating fine?
        
           | latchkey wrote:
           | At least in California, the stuff (especially gummies) you
           | get from the dispensaries is in well controlled doses. Once
           | you find your tolerance levels for a specific brand (through
           | experimentation with smaller amounts) it is easy to just eat
           | half of one, know you're getting X mg of THC and use that as
           | a baseline. Then you just keep buying the same thing and even
           | with different brands, you still have that X mg baseline to
           | go from.
        
       | pigtailgirl wrote:
        
       | throwawayboise wrote:
       | I 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 wrote:
         | In 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 wrote:
           | Maybe you should invest in a locking door so you will be able
           | to prevent these people from entering your living space to
           | smoke cannabis?
        
             | xeromal wrote:
             | lol, 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!
        
             | mschuster91 wrote:
             | OP 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 wrote:
             | Multifamily 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.
        
           | Jeff_Brown wrote:
           | No 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 wrote:
         | >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 - I bet real
         | tobacco is less harmful but don't quote me on that.
        
           | amanaplanacanal wrote:
           | On 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 wrote:
       | absolutely shocking and mindblowing that inhaling smoke is bad
        
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       (page generated 2022-03-31 23:01 UTC)