Smoking is still a big deal in the Middle East. Tel Aviv smokes like Paris in the 80s, and the hookah and shisha pipe is going strong in every city where the taste of apple tobacco makes you forget that the smoke is bad for your lungs. Vaping is pretty much everywhere in the world. Parents typically shoo the kids outside or smoke on the balcony but the residue from smoking can also do harm, finds a new study, citing third-hand smoke.

Thirdhand smoke is the presence of toxic tobacco by-products that remain on surfaces such as furniture, décor, walls and floors. It does not matter of the tobacco is organic. Some cultures like Native Americans may use tobacco for ceremonial purposes. 

In a new study, published in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, researchers tested the surfaces in smoking households where children reside and found troubling results, says Ashley Merianos, a tobacco researcher at the University of Cincinnati who led the study.

Researchers found nicotine on surfaces in all of the children’s homes and detected the presence of a tobacco-specific carcinogen (called NNK) in nearly half of the homes, she says.  The study reported that the NNK levels on surfaces and vacuumed dust were similar, which Merianos says indicates that surfaces and dust can be similar reservoirs and sources of thirdhand smoke exposure for children.

“This is critically important and concerning, since NNK is considered the most potent carcinogen for tobacco-induced cancers,” says Merianos, an associate professor in UC’s School of Human Services.

Nicotine affects poorer families

• Children living in lower-income households had higher levels of NNK and nicotine found on home surfaces.
• Children living in homes that did not ban indoor smoking had higher levels of NNK and nicotine found on surfaces.

Merianos says that NNK and nicotine were still detected in homes with voluntary indoor smoking bans, which highlights the persistence of thirdhand smoke pollutants on surfaces in children’s homes: “This research highlights that home smoking bans do not fully protect children and their families from the dangers of tobacco,” she adds.

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The Middle East is synonymous with good food and over-zealous smokers. The poorer the town or village and the more you will see chain smoking in younger populations. You see it in the teeth. We know smoking is a vice that is not good to start. 

But what if it’s too late for you? You started and you can’t stop? We know that pretty much any vice except watching kitten videos on the Internet isn’t going to be good for you.

I have friends in Tel Aviv that smoke one cigarette a day –– at the end of the day with a glass of wine –– and have done so for years without leaping to 2 or 3 or half a pack. I think that is a sensible vice. No doubt there are ways to enjoy a vice without it getting out of control. 

Middle Eastern vices are not the same that you find in America or Europe. In the Middle East it’s about hashish. Americans and Canadians love cannabis now, and everywhere in Canada, and in more than half of the US States, you will have no problem with this vice. It is even being given out as medicine to help epilepsy, anxiety, pain from cancer. 

We know Europeans, especially the french smoke too many cigarettes too, and Americans are busy making a good old healthy THC-less  CBD tincture while out foraging for plants and mushroom chaga tea and living the #vanlife.

Smoking the hookah pipe

One of the most popular Middle East vices are hookah or shisha pipe smoking (nargila in Israel), which are those big Arabian-styled smoking pipes that look like they are from Aladdin’s cave. They get stuffed with a fruit flavored tobacco which is just as, even maybe more dangerous than regular cigarettes if you read some of our past articles. Don’t be fooled by the sweet smelling aroma. 

What is ghat?

Ghat, khat or gat is another vice that started in Yemen, but if you look around the markets around the Middle East you will find ghat leaves for sale – even in Israel. They give a moderate to mild high, and the most addictive part of ghat might be behavioural as it might be the only activity some people in Yemen want to do. It’s been creating some environmental problems in Yemen too. 

It is estimated that people in Yemen eat as much as 500 grams of the stuff each day, and seem to be content to enjoy just sitting around and being mildly intoxicated by its effects, which many say are a substitute for the favorite vice of the west –– alcohol –– (officially banned in Muslim Yemen), tobacco, and certain mild narcotics like hashish.

What is Middle Eastern snuff?

A lesser known vice found in the Middle East is naswār or nas. It is a moist, powdered tobacco snuff used in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Russia and Uzbekistan. Stuff if into the floor of your mouth or the inside of your cheek for 20 minutes and feel the same high effect from snus or dipping tobacco. Naswar was introduced into Western Europe by Ramon Pane, a Spanish monk after Columbus sailed the Americas from 1493-1496.

Years later in 1561, Jean Nicot, a French ambassador in Lisbon, Portugal, sent naswar to Catherine de’ Medici to treat her son’s ongoing migraine headaches. 

Is coffee a vice?

Vices, including coffee, all seem to start from a place where they help us all feel a little bit better. Whether they calm depression after a breakup (I started smoking after a really sad breakup years ago), or take the edge off a headache or a rough time at work, or not having work.

It’s all about moderation, my dear, my mother used to tell me. Although I think she also called cannabis devil’s weed. So take even Mom’s advice with a grain or salt. 

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Exposed to carbon emissions or cigarette smoke, her potions transform through a series reversible color changes.

Other inks are responsive to light, heat and friction, allowing you to “change clothes” without ever undressing!

“I chose the feathers because [this] piece was about the birth of something new and the piece goes through dark phases to light, which is meant to be spiritual,” Bowker told Dezeen at the Wearable Futures conference in London last week.

Bowker began her research at the Royal College of Art, concocting inks that respond to different environmental conditions. It was there that she developed a pollution-absorbent ink called PdCl2, which changes color from yellow to black in contaminated conditions then reverts back in fresh air.

“I graduated with an ink which is respondent to seven different parameters in the environment,” Bowker said. “Not only will it absorb air pollution, it will change color to UV, heat, air friction, moisture and more. This gives it the capability to go through the full Red-Green-Blue scale.”

“Each ink works very differently, it depends on what sort of material you want to apply it to,” she added.

The inks can be applied to most materials. “You can screen-print it, paint it, spray it, or alternatively you can dye things with it, impregnating the fibers with the color,” said Bowker.

Bowker’s techno-dyes were initially showcased using fashion, but they’re now being adopted by a range of industries seeking applications bespoke to their business, including a concept airplane interior for Airbus.

“Everyone saw this technology and saw their own vision of how they could use it,” said Bowker.

Bowker (pictured above) can customize the inks to change color in specific places by mapping the conditions at the locations and creating an ink to respond to these parameters.

“If you came to me and said ‘I want my silk jersey to change color when I’m at Oxford Street, then when I’m at Baker Street I want to be a different color’, I would go out and map the fluctuations in the environment of each tube station then I would create you an ink that responds to those environments,” Bowker told Dezeen.

Bowker has established The Unseen, a design firm focused on biological and chemical technology to raise product awareness.

She also hopes to develop manufacturing to make the ink more affordable. The company is targeting London Fashion Week in February 2014 for a wider product launch.

Ultimately, Bowker sees potential in the medical industry, “If it goes into a T-shirt that lets you know if you’re going to have an asthma attack, that for me is much more successful than having an amazing fashion collection.”

All images from Lauren Bowker

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