Does IQOS Cause Secondhand Smoke Harm?

Does IQOS cause secondhand smoke harm? In households with smokers, the biggest concerns are always ash and secondhand smoke. My husband has been smoking cigarettes for about eleven or twelve years. Over the past two years, he has gradually cut back, but there was still a lot of ash around the house—especially in small places like the seams of the sofa, where it built up over time and was very hard to clean. Every time I cleaned the room, it really bothered me, so I kept thinking about switching him to something that wouldn’t produce ash.

During the summer vacation, our daughter took us abroad to stay for a while. While shopping, we happened to see an IQOS counter. They said this product uses new technology that heats instead of burns, so it doesn’t produce ash. I was very interested, so I bought one for him to try.
At first, he wasn’t very happy with it and said he wasn’t used to it. But after two or three days, I noticed that he gradually stopped complaining. The longer he used IQOS, the less often he smoked cigarettes. He had tried to quit before, but the results weren’t very obvious—he still smoked four or five cigarettes a day. But after using IQOS for a week, I found that he was down to just two or three cigarettes a day, which really surprised me. After trying to quit for so many years without much success, IQOS showed us such a big change in just one week.

Another thing was the change in our home environment. One reason I wanted him to quit was that the secondhand smoke at home had become too much. In summer, it was manageable because we could keep the windows open for ventilation, but in winter, with the heat on and the room sealed up, if you stayed inside for too long your clothes would pick up a strong smoke smell that wouldn’t wash out. And when someone came in from outside, the whole room immediately smelled of cigarette tar. It was awful, and even a little embarrassing when guests came over. After he started using IQOS, I could clearly tell that the home environment improved a lot. First, there was the ash—whether on the coffee table in the living room, in the floor gaps, or in his study, there was basically no ash anymore. That should be one of the benefits of its “heat-not-burn” technology. Second was the issue of secondhand smoke. This difference felt very direct: when he used it in the living room and I sat beside him on the sofa, I could hardly smell anything. My husband even joked that from now on, he would never be banished to the balcony to smoke again. Now he has completely quit cigarettes and is currently using IQOS, about half a pack to one pack a day. I’m planning to persuade him to quit IQOS as well. Although IQOS is much healthier than cigarettes, it is still tobacco in the end, and nicotine is so harmful to the body. I don’t want to gamble with his health.

But no matter what, IQOS helped me achieve a cleaner and healthier smoking environment. Friends who also have smokers at home can give it a try. If someone really has to smoke, then at the very least they should choose something that is a little healthier for themselves and their family.

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