What Absorbs Cigarette Smoke

Don’t we all hate when the annoying smell of cigarettes lingers in our clothes, hair, and home?! Spending as little as a few minutes in a bar filled with smoke can make you and your stuff smell like a pack of cigarettes. Tobacco smoke doesn’t only smell bad but is also dangerous for our health. Even if you’re not a smoker, exposure to secondhand smoke can affect your well-being. Either way, you should consider limiting and, ideally, removing, the smell of tobacco smoke from your home and clothes.

In this post, we’ll get into more detail on types of exposure to cigarette smoke, and how smoke absorbs into your body and clothes. After the smell of cigarettes settles in, getting rid of it can be a challenging task. That’s why this article includes guidelines on how to remove tobacco odor from your skin, hair, clothes, and room. Keep reading to learn what absorbs cigarette smoke, how to eliminate it, and how to smoke inside without it smelling.

What Are the Types of Exposure to Cigarette Smoke?

As you know, cigarette smoke consists of many harmful chemical compounds such as formaldehyde, phenol, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and others. Smokers breathe in all those chemicals while consuming tobacco, and this is known as firsthand smoke. The best advice we can give here is to quit smoking. In case that’s not an option, stay with us and we’ll provide you some useful tips on how to remove the annoying, smokey smell from your home.

A mixture of smoke from the lit cigarette and the smoke exhaled through the smoker’s mouth is known as secondhand smoke. The easiest way to minimize this type of exposure would be to stay away from smokers and public places where smoking is allowed. You should also not allow people to smoke in your household and car.

The part of the above-mentioned chemicals that remain absorbed on objects and surfaces is called thirdhand smoke. This type of exposure is responsible for clothes, walls, carpets, and furnishing smelling like tobacco. That smell can linger in space and things for long periods of time.

How is Tobacco Smoke Absorbed?

Tobacco smoke makes an impact on how your body smells and feels. Naturally, the first place where it absorbs is the smoker’s lungs. The smell of cigarette smoke also lingers in the mouths, teeth, gums, and tongues of smokers.

Nicotine in the lungs and skin increases sweating and makes sweat smell stronger. Excessive sweating will cause the smoker’s skin to smell like an ashtray.

Throughout the smoking process, cigarette smokes leaves a carcinogenic remainder on anything it gets in interacts on the outside, including clothes and hair. Although invisible, this remainder will still spread the unpleasant odor.

In the sections below, we’ll offer you some useful tips on how to get rid of cigarette smoke from your skin, hair, breath, clothes, and home.

How to Resolve Cigarette Smoke

As stated before, the cigarette smell catches on anything it gets in touch with, so you can find it in your skin, hair, clothes, walls, curtains, furniture. Before you know it, it’s all around you, from your body to your surroundings, so it might be a good idea to take steps towards getting rid of cigarette smoke. In the paragraphs below, you’ll find hints on how to reduce or eliminate tobacco odor in your things and your home.

How to Remove Cigarette Smoke from Your Skin?

• Cover up as much of your  skin as you can while smoking, since this can keep the odor from absorbing in your skin.
• Washing your hands right after smoking can help to remove the smell that cigarette leaves on your fingers. We suggest you mix some baking soda with liquid soap and rub your hands in warm water. You can also use alcohol-based hand sanitizer after a cigarette since this will help eliminate some smokey smell. Anyway, keep in mind that this might further irritate sensitive areas of the skin.
• Take a shower whenever you can, but at least before bed to wash smoke out of your hair.
• Use facial cleansers to wash your face. This will allow you to remove any remaining  tobacco smoke.

How to Remove Cigarette Smoke from Your Hair?

• Wash your hair, beard, and mustache regularly, using a shampoo and conditioner. In case your hair still smells like tobacco when done, rinse and repeat.

How to Remove Cigarette Smoke from Your Breath?

• The simplest way to eliminate smelly breath is to brush and floss your teeth, gargle with mouthwash and clean your tongue with a tongue cleaner after each cigarette. Since you’ll probably also be in situations in which you can’t brush your teeth right away, having a pack of mints, gums, or hard candies will also help keep your breath fresh. We should note here that brushing your teeth after you’re done with a cigarette can help lessen the staining of the teeth caused by nicotine and tar.

How to Remove Cigarette Smoke from Your Clothes?

• Combine your laundry detergent with one cup of baking soda and wash your clothes in a machine. However, in case the smokey smell still sticks around after the first wash, simply repeat the process. It’s worth mentioning that you use the same mixture to handwash delicate pieces of clothes.
• In case you need the tobacco odor gone instantly, rub dryer sheets on each garment and remember not to leave out scarves, hats, shoes, or gloves.
• Air fresheners for fabric are also available. They can be used to eliminate the smokey smell out of clothes. Anyway, keep in mind that this method would require you to spray the whole garment to remove the odors.

How to Eliminate Cigarette Smell from Your Home?

Naturally, the first step towards removing cigarette smoke from your home would be to stop smoking indoors. Further moves depend on the level of smoke contamination in your home.

Use Items from Your  Home to Remove Cigarette Smoke

Luckily, we can handle the annoying cigarette smoke using the products which almost any home already has:

• Combine white vinegar with lemon juice, and then spray it around your home the way you’d do with an air freshener.
• You can also fill a few bowls with white vinegar, and leave them overnight in the areas most affected by smoke.
• You can also use vinegar to clean the surfaces covered in nicotine remainders. Another trick you can do with vinegar is to spray it on a towel and then wave it around for a few minutes. This will speed up the process of removing cigarette smoke from your home.
• Coffee grounds are great when it comes to eliminating undesired smells. To give it a try, take several coffee filters and fill them with fresh grounds. Spread them around the places where cigarette smoke lingers, and let them sit for a few days.

Use Technology to Remove Cigarette Smoke

In case the homemade options fail to remove the smokey odor from your home, try using technology. There’s plenty of options available on the market, but our top picks are:

• Use an air purifier with carbon filters to eliminate cigarette smoke from your home. These devices are created to “catch” gases as they move through a filter filled with activated charcoal. Activated charcoal uses pores to make more space for smoke in the filter. Carbon filters traps gases through a process known as adsorption. If you decide to purchase this type of air purifier, remember to see the user manual which will tell you how often should you replace the filter.
• Use an air purifier with a HEPA filter, which is designed to trap any particles sized 0.3 microns or larger.

Prevent the Buildup of Thirdhand Smoke

As always, it’s better to focus on the reason rather than on the consequences, so in this section, we’ll share some tips on how to prevent thirdhand smoke buildup.

• Ventilate your space frequently. You can even use a fan to point the smoke toward the window.
• Consider smoking only by an open window.
• Clean or replace filters in your air conditioner, heaters, or air purifiers regularly.
• Wash drapes, curtains, and any upholstery regularly.
• Wipe your walls, floors, windows, and other surfaces using white vinegar, baking soda or bleach.
• Leave bowls filled with white vinegar or activated charcoal in all rooms, and replace them weekly. Vinegar and charcoal have the power to absorb unpleasant scents.
• Steam clean all sofas, chairs, and other furnished items.
• Rub your mattresses, pillows, and other unwashable things with dryer sheets.
• Add a pleasant smell using essential oil.

Final Words

This concludes our comprehensive guide on how to get rid of cigarette smoke. Stick with the tips listed in previous sections, and you will eliminate the unpleasant, smokey odor from your home. As always, in case you have any questions, feel free to post a comment, and we’ll be happy to help you.