Atmospheric sampling at San Francisco to show tobacco pollution
Dr Noel Aquilina has been invited by the Thirdhand Smoke Consortium of the University of California to be an affiliate researcher.
This consortium is funded by the California’s Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) supporting more than 1200 innovative tobacco-related studies to reduce the human and economic costs of tobacco use. The program is led by researchers mainly from California but also from various institutions in the US.
Dr Aquilina has been working with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) on biomarkers and airborne pollutants derived from tobacco smoke since 2005 and to date is the only European researcher within the consortium. He is actively engaged on a project and responsible of atmospheric sampling campaigns in several cities with the intent to show that there is also a tobacco smoke component to air pollution at a global level.
This will be important in the context of sustained exposure to very dangerous tobacco-related carcinogens even away from smoking. The consortium has recently published a perspective paper on new evidence, challenges, and future directions of thirdhand smoke and its implications.
Download the perspective paper: Thirdhand Smoke: New Evidence, Challenges, and Future Directions.
