If you've ever been in a house or a car that belongs to a smoker, you're familiar with the acrid, lingering scent of tobacco. What you may not know is that the residue from cigarette smoke, called thirdhand smoke, remains in the fabrics and surfaces of indoor environments for several hours after the smoking ends.

"One of the things that we're going to do at Berkeley Lab is to try to understand how thirdhand smoke moves around in an actual room and the composition of thirdhand smoke residues in more detail."

Lab scientist Lara Gundel says she and her colleagues have been studying thirdhand smoke for years and their latest study focused on inhalation. And as Gundel noted in previous studies, this type of exposure may also include inhaling dust with noxious residues of thirdhand smoke.

"Ordinary house dust that our vacuums pick up can pick up thirdhand smoke from the air. So, that means the people most at risk of exposure are children. They tend to have more surface contact indoors because they crawl around on carpets."