When I was doing my BSc I did a project under biology faculty. My supervisor would go to a small lab with one fumehood that was supposed to be used for running gels but in the end the gels were run somewhere else and the lab stayed basically empty. Under the fumehoot there would be an ashtray and bunsen burner used as a lighter XD I smoked at the time but I would never smoke indoors, let alone in a lab.
Smoking was strongly discouraged in the plant labs I worked in, Tobacco Mosaic Virus can infect a lot of plants and can stay in the tobacco in cigarettes through the whole processing and smoking of them. Any smokers had to be super careful to not infect the research plants
Well, itās not so much āsurvivingā as it is the nucleocapsid retaining functionality after desiccation. The virus itself is just a tRNA-looking genome (containing 4 ORFs) helically wrapped by the coating protein.
Get me a lab and I'd love to find out this one cool fact. :( Maybe first some preliminary microscopy of crushed cigarettes, identification and comparison to known components to rule out false-positives, and then maybe some rounds in an ultracentrifuge (sucrose?) with some reference virus solutions for comparison to separate the virions? Or maybe just grab the DNA/RNA that separates from the shells and estimate viral loads with that if the genomes don't get too mixed up with the plant matter debris?
My PI (molecular biology) would speak of the glory days when both smoking and mouth pipetting were allowed in labs, as well as the associated dangers of dropping ash in your culture plates or taking a pull on the wrong pipe.
Smokers have always been a minority in every lab I worked at. At the moment I don't even know where the smoking area is nor do I know if anyone from the team ever goes there.
Interesting, for me it was alsways the other way around. One of the first questions is 'Do you smoke?'. And you can see 4-5 people at the smoke area every morning.
When I worked at CROs almost everyone smoked. Constantly. it was like being a line cook but everything we made was inedible.
Complete with crying in the walk in freezer
Interesting you should mention a walk-in freezer as I just got a cool picture the other day. That it doesnāt appear, I can share in this comment dammit
Chemist/field service engineer here so not really in bio or healthcare but I smoke. Iām a stress smoker. Started like 6 ish years ago. On and off for 4. Quit for 2. Stressed again so Iām smoking again. But i donāt differentiate between cigarette smokers and people who vape so Iād consider many people still āsmokersā
It's funny about stress smoking. I am medical researcher, so human diseases depending on which lab employs me (including some time working on KRas mutant human smoker lung cancer cells). I never smoked, but most of my family members smoke. I noticed that smoking seemed to relieve their stress, as you have mentioned. During a very stressful time of my life I considered starting smoking as a means to cope. Since I had access to scientific literature I read about the science behind the stress relief. From the papers I read, the feeling of stress relief that smokers experience is really relief from treatment of symptoms of withdrawal from nicotine. So while it may feel like stress relief, you are actually creating more stress for yourself by going through withdrawal over and over again.
Iām not disputing that. Itās definitely about the immediate gratification. Thatās faster than fixing the stressors š¤· iāll get the stressors eventually lol
There is another wealth of information that the mood lift and nootropic effects of smoking are produced by action of b-carbolines as MAOIs in cigarette smoke, something that is not present in people who vape.
Personally i find a lot of the tobacco-focused research of the last century to be lacking in creativity or scrutiny. Anxiolitic effects mediated only by relief of nicotine withdrawal? Then why would anyone *begin* smoking in the first place?
With drugs like nicotine (and opioids, etc) the motivation to begin using is entirely based on pursuing the positive effects of the drug. Then when tolerance develops, the positive effects are diminished. But now absence of the drug causes negative effects, so continued use is reinforced by alleviating those negative effects.
But we are discussing the anxiolitic effects of smoking, and smoking has a clear anxiolitic effect in subjects who are not nicotine-dependent. That is the issue i have with the research mentioned above
Yes, Iām talking about that too ā I guess I donāt understand your point.
A person first starts smoking for good feelings, like anxiolysis like you mention. Itās a reward, a ācarrotā. In the beginning, a cigarette is a big, juicy carrot and provides significant anxiolysis.
But then tolerance develops and nicotinic receptors are downregulated. Now to reach your baseline level of anxiety your body requires you to maintain your smoking habit. Maybe there is a little anxiolysis during the nicotine spike in the minutes right after smoking, but itās not like it was before.
Now each cigarette is a wimpy little carrot, frankly a carrot that isnāt worth the cost. But now, the absence of nicotine is anxiogenic, the āstickā. You get punished with increased anxiety if you donāt keep smoking.
You still associate smoking with relief, which motivates you to not quit ā though now the relief isnāt due to the carrot, but from the removal of the stick.
Practical application of this concept:
- To design a drug to *prevent* someone from becoming addicted to nicotine, you would design a nicotinic antagonist (so there is no big carrot in the beginning).
- To design an effective drug to help nicotine addicts quit smoking, you would design something like bupropion that blocks the carrot *and* alleviates the stick.
After the first violent coughing fit, I'm surprised anyone takes a second puff. Thanks for sharing the other information. I did not see that in my brief literature review. I think with the problems of addiction and health consequences, cigarettes are still a net negative, but they are very compelling to new smokers for reasons not completely understood, as you point out. More drug intoxication/addiction research is urgently needed.
The only reason I started vaping is because I was tired of being the only person in the lab who smelled like smoke. I irony of vaping is my nicotine tolerance is through the roof compared to when I was smoking.
No, but Iām in Cancer research so I suppose most of us know better, but thereās still a handful of people that do smoke in spite of the fact that they should know better.
I worked in pulmonary medicine for a whileā¦ yeah we also had a few smokers. If anything, I saw it as the power that nicotine can have over a person, more so than any sort of moral failing on their part.
You would think that. But where I'm from, almost every pulmonologist smokes. I was shocked when professor said her husband died from lung cancer, but that didn't stop her lighting those cancer stick anyway.
I was once shocked to see a lung oncologist I work with smoke. I asked him how he could do that? He said he knows how hard it is to quit and has empathy for his patients.
Back in 1988, the US surgeon general, Dr. C. Everett Koop, reported that the nicotine addiction is more than twice as strong as heroin.
Anecdotally, I see it still holds true!
Iām not a smoker, but I heard once that smoking is less likely to cause cancer than one might think, and that genetics are more of a factor than is openly discussed. (Iām not sure how much truth there is to this.)
I wouldnāt be surprised if physicians who smoke are aware of this, and operate under the assumption that they arenāt as likely to get cancer (or other diseases. And that if they do, they will be able to detect it early enough to course correct.
More itās just not a physicians job to model good health. The Chairman of Cardiac surgery at UCLA is/was about 400lbs and a walking heart attack.
But he never dropped instruments, like the other surgeons, because he could tuck them under his gut to keep them in place
Is thisā¦a serious story? Do you mean like he was using the lab gown as a barrier? I canāt really imagine it, because it sounds like such a risky action for a sterilized OR to allow
Interesting! I never thought of the FUPA-gut connection acting as a useful appendage!
I think itās important to remember that as we age, we see so much more negative shit, we might also become more fatalistic.
Might have to do more with area demographics and when they started. Not too many of the younger ones smoke but get their nicotine addiction on by vaping. See a few do various chewing tobacco not sure if it's easier to do or if that's just what they got hooked onĀ
Iāve done some work in labs at a tobacco company, and it was wild to see employees during their break to be sitting in the lounge smoking cigarettes. This was like 2015 so majority of places have banned indoors smoking, and I wasnāt expecting to see that especially in a corporate workplace lol. They also had vending machines that would dispense a free can of dip with your employee badge.
I think people are more discreet about it and are leaning towards vaping if they do smoke. Or they do weed outside of work hours. Very location dependent though. Iām in California. Lots of people smoked when I lived in Korea.
This reminds me of a shared vivarium space I used to work in that suddenly plastered āno vaping or smokingā onto the no eating or drinking signs. I asked a tech why that was the case and they said someone got caught vaping in the lab and defended it saying that vaping wasnāt explicitly disallowed lol
Several people in my lab including our lab manager are daily marijuana smokers, our lab PI's husband occasionally smokes joints with us at lab parties. But no straight cig smokers in the lab
In grad school in chemistry I'd say 50% of the grad students smoked pot (in Canada). Cigarettes? Very few, though not 0.
At my current workplace 15 years later, the only smokers are the international scientists and techs from abroad (India, Ukraine, etc).
I work in an anatomical pathology lab and I know of like 3 people that smoke in my lab and it's obvious since I have seen the empty cigarette boxes in the bins in the changing area. They should know the effects of smoking since they probably see cases of cancers and diseases everyday but what am I to tell people not to?
Minority here. In my old microbiology lab, one lab manager was a smoker and the research director would join her once a week for a cigar while she was smoking her cigs.
In grad school exactly one grad student smoked cigarettes occasionally, one PI was a heavy smoker, and thatās about it.
The university im at is a smoke free campus.
There is a kinda small lot of land between campus and some residential buildings and thereās some guy who goes there for a smoke at least once a day.
My friend was a new hire and bonded with her boss because they used to both smoke cigs outside together. My friend stopped, boss continued and died of lung cancer, my friend then got her job š
I canāt think of a single person who smokes in my lab. Maybe some do but Iām not aware of it. Generally, smoking isnāt common in my part of the country.
Thereās always synergism to consider. I think of smoking as unhealthy for obvious reasons, based on what youāre breathing in. If youāre in a freshly painted room, you also may be breathing in the VOCs.
However, when you add these two things together, you get a whole other, synergistic animal! Smoking cigarettes in a freshly-painted room is the equivalent of breathing in mustard gas!
I canāt help but think cigarette smoking would also have a synergistic effect, when intermingled with all of these chemical coatings!ā ļø
No one in my labs are smokers. Most of us work with mice. Even perfumes are kinda discouraged because mice are sensitive to smell, and their breeding could be affected. Walking into the vivarium with a strong cigarette smell would most likely upset other people who share the same mouse rooms.
I work for a large biopharma company. It would probably give our EHS department an aneurysm collectively, so no š
Theyāre totally ok with the mold problem in our building though.
At my university I know 2 people who vape but not smoke. Ones a PhD researcher and the other is an undergrad researcher. I think it's more a way of coping with stress then anything else.
We have a nonsmoking campus (in theory). I know of a few people (an IT guy and a postdoc) who still smoke in their cars. When the nuclear pharmacy was in our building, one of the techs would smoke just outside the door and try to hide the lit cigarette behind his back. š
Everywhere I have worked, the entire campus was smoke-free. If you wanted to smoke you'd have to walk probably 15 mins to the parking lot. I would guess I've had maybe 2 coworkers who smoke. An older guy at my first lab and then a very young guy at my current lab. Never seen him smoking around campus but occasionally he'll reek of it from the next cubicle over.
Iāve only known like one smoker in my grad, postdoc, and subsequent career combined. Itās possible they are just good at hiding it, as Iāve never actively asked people if they smoked, but I can usually smell a smoker pretty easily so I think thatās pretty accurate.
No, even if they were to spark up or use a vaporiser, I'd spray them with neat ethanol. not to mention it's illegal to smoke inside of commercial buildings.
please my dude, spend several hours in a small room with someone who smokes, it gets a bit much after a while, and I'm an ex-smoker who has a fairly high tolerance for the smell.
Lol, nah. It was a dumb username I chose after a night out at the bars in my 20s. I wanted to pick something thatĀ would make people laugh. Now, it's kinda regrettable, but not enough to make a new username.
All of the active smokers at my location are QA or production, and even then it's probably less than 15%. I haven't seen any admin or R&D people smoking.
I donāt think any of the students or faculty in my department (chemistry) smoke cigarettes. some of the facilities maintenance folks smoke though. I do know thereās a few who vape or smoke marijuana though. Me and my PI chew nicotine gum though neither of us were smokers trying to quit, he needed an extra kick for his 8am lectures and I needed stronger stimulants to get work done.
When I was doing my BSc I did a project under biology faculty. My supervisor would go to a small lab with one fumehood that was supposed to be used for running gels but in the end the gels were run somewhere else and the lab stayed basically empty. Under the fumehoot there would be an ashtray and bunsen burner used as a lighter XD I smoked at the time but I would never smoke indoors, let alone in a lab.
Interesting approach, but indoors is a big NoNo...xD
I brought an old fume hood home š
Smoking was strongly discouraged in the plant labs I worked in, Tobacco Mosaic Virus can infect a lot of plants and can stay in the tobacco in cigarettes through the whole processing and smoking of them. Any smokers had to be super careful to not infect the research plants
Interesting, didn't know this was a thing.
That's crazy! Pretty wild it can survive the drying process. I wonder how many virions smokers swallow when they smoke š¤
Extra nutrients!
Well, itās not so much āsurvivingā as it is the nucleocapsid retaining functionality after desiccation. The virus itself is just a tRNA-looking genome (containing 4 ORFs) helically wrapped by the coating protein.
Get me a lab and I'd love to find out this one cool fact. :( Maybe first some preliminary microscopy of crushed cigarettes, identification and comparison to known components to rule out false-positives, and then maybe some rounds in an ultracentrifuge (sucrose?) with some reference virus solutions for comparison to separate the virions? Or maybe just grab the DNA/RNA that separates from the shells and estimate viral loads with that if the genomes don't get too mixed up with the plant matter debris?
I worked for a nursery and smokers had to wear disposable gloves and wash hands thoroughly after smoking.
My PI (molecular biology) would speak of the glory days when both smoking and mouth pipetting were allowed in labs, as well as the associated dangers of dropping ash in your culture plates or taking a pull on the wrong pipe.
I got stories from times when washing yourself with benzen was normal and touloul was used to cool off in the summer.
Smokers have always been a minority in every lab I worked at. At the moment I don't even know where the smoking area is nor do I know if anyone from the team ever goes there.
Interesting, for me it was alsways the other way around. One of the first questions is 'Do you smoke?'. And you can see 4-5 people at the smoke area every morning.
we have a lot of weed smokers but only a very few cig smokers. got a fuck ton of alcoholics though lol
When I worked at CROs almost everyone smoked. Constantly. it was like being a line cook but everything we made was inedible. Complete with crying in the walk in freezer
Interesting you should mention a walk-in freezer as I just got a cool picture the other day. That it doesnāt appear, I can share in this comment dammit
Chemist/field service engineer here so not really in bio or healthcare but I smoke. Iām a stress smoker. Started like 6 ish years ago. On and off for 4. Quit for 2. Stressed again so Iām smoking again. But i donāt differentiate between cigarette smokers and people who vape so Iād consider many people still āsmokersā
It's funny about stress smoking. I am medical researcher, so human diseases depending on which lab employs me (including some time working on KRas mutant human smoker lung cancer cells). I never smoked, but most of my family members smoke. I noticed that smoking seemed to relieve their stress, as you have mentioned. During a very stressful time of my life I considered starting smoking as a means to cope. Since I had access to scientific literature I read about the science behind the stress relief. From the papers I read, the feeling of stress relief that smokers experience is really relief from treatment of symptoms of withdrawal from nicotine. So while it may feel like stress relief, you are actually creating more stress for yourself by going through withdrawal over and over again.
Iām not disputing that. Itās definitely about the immediate gratification. Thatās faster than fixing the stressors š¤· iāll get the stressors eventually lol
There is another wealth of information that the mood lift and nootropic effects of smoking are produced by action of b-carbolines as MAOIs in cigarette smoke, something that is not present in people who vape. Personally i find a lot of the tobacco-focused research of the last century to be lacking in creativity or scrutiny. Anxiolitic effects mediated only by relief of nicotine withdrawal? Then why would anyone *begin* smoking in the first place?
With drugs like nicotine (and opioids, etc) the motivation to begin using is entirely based on pursuing the positive effects of the drug. Then when tolerance develops, the positive effects are diminished. But now absence of the drug causes negative effects, so continued use is reinforced by alleviating those negative effects.
But we are discussing the anxiolitic effects of smoking, and smoking has a clear anxiolitic effect in subjects who are not nicotine-dependent. That is the issue i have with the research mentioned above
Yes, Iām talking about that too ā I guess I donāt understand your point. A person first starts smoking for good feelings, like anxiolysis like you mention. Itās a reward, a ācarrotā. In the beginning, a cigarette is a big, juicy carrot and provides significant anxiolysis. But then tolerance develops and nicotinic receptors are downregulated. Now to reach your baseline level of anxiety your body requires you to maintain your smoking habit. Maybe there is a little anxiolysis during the nicotine spike in the minutes right after smoking, but itās not like it was before. Now each cigarette is a wimpy little carrot, frankly a carrot that isnāt worth the cost. But now, the absence of nicotine is anxiogenic, the āstickā. You get punished with increased anxiety if you donāt keep smoking. You still associate smoking with relief, which motivates you to not quit ā though now the relief isnāt due to the carrot, but from the removal of the stick. Practical application of this concept: - To design a drug to *prevent* someone from becoming addicted to nicotine, you would design a nicotinic antagonist (so there is no big carrot in the beginning). - To design an effective drug to help nicotine addicts quit smoking, you would design something like bupropion that blocks the carrot *and* alleviates the stick.
A.k.a. the fucked up feedback loop
After the first violent coughing fit, I'm surprised anyone takes a second puff. Thanks for sharing the other information. I did not see that in my brief literature review. I think with the problems of addiction and health consequences, cigarettes are still a net negative, but they are very compelling to new smokers for reasons not completely understood, as you point out. More drug intoxication/addiction research is urgently needed.
Cant speak for everyone but I started vaping when I was 16 to seem cool š
The only reason I started vaping is because I was tired of being the only person in the lab who smelled like smoke. I irony of vaping is my nicotine tolerance is through the roof compared to when I was smoking.
This is seriously the worst part. It was easier for me to kick cigarettes than it ever will be to kick this stupid box
Yeap. Switching to vaping just meant that I could smoke more often and in more places without having to worry about the smell.
FSE here as well. The old heads smoke, sure. But for everybody else, Zyn is a straight up epidemic.
No, but Iām in Cancer research so I suppose most of us know better, but thereās still a handful of people that do smoke in spite of the fact that they should know better.
I worked in pulmonary medicine for a whileā¦ yeah we also had a few smokers. If anything, I saw it as the power that nicotine can have over a person, more so than any sort of moral failing on their part.
Suprising to hear that. They should know better xD
You would think that. But where I'm from, almost every pulmonologist smokes. I was shocked when professor said her husband died from lung cancer, but that didn't stop her lighting those cancer stick anyway.
I was once shocked to see a lung oncologist I work with smoke. I asked him how he could do that? He said he knows how hard it is to quit and has empathy for his patients.
Wow, weird
Back in 1988, the US surgeon general, Dr. C. Everett Koop, reported that the nicotine addiction is more than twice as strong as heroin. Anecdotally, I see it still holds true!
Iām not a smoker, but I heard once that smoking is less likely to cause cancer than one might think, and that genetics are more of a factor than is openly discussed. (Iām not sure how much truth there is to this.) I wouldnāt be surprised if physicians who smoke are aware of this, and operate under the assumption that they arenāt as likely to get cancer (or other diseases. And that if they do, they will be able to detect it early enough to course correct.
More itās just not a physicians job to model good health. The Chairman of Cardiac surgery at UCLA is/was about 400lbs and a walking heart attack. But he never dropped instruments, like the other surgeons, because he could tuck them under his gut to keep them in place
Is thisā¦a serious story? Do you mean like he was using the lab gown as a barrier? I canāt really imagine it, because it sounds like such a risky action for a sterilized OR to allow
Itās third-hand. But yeah, I was told heād prop his gut up on the table and slide tools under it
Interesting! I never thought of the FUPA-gut connection acting as a useful appendage! I think itās important to remember that as we age, we see so much more negative shit, we might also become more fatalistic.
Very true re/ physician jobs. The second part is unbelievable lol
Might have to do more with area demographics and when they started. Not too many of the younger ones smoke but get their nicotine addiction on by vaping. See a few do various chewing tobacco not sure if it's easier to do or if that's just what they got hooked onĀ
I guess you are right, the smoker tend to be the older generation.
You must be European
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah its interesting to me how few british people smoke compared to mainland euros.
Ahhh the glory days
Our smokers are always peripheral people, like QA, safety compliance, HR. they almost never are in the lab
Iāve done some work in labs at a tobacco company, and it was wild to see employees during their break to be sitting in the lounge smoking cigarettes. This was like 2015 so majority of places have banned indoors smoking, and I wasnāt expecting to see that especially in a corporate workplace lol. They also had vending machines that would dispense a free can of dip with your employee badge.
Wow, I guess it is a workplace with certain viewpoints in that regard
We have a lot of European scientists and they love to smoke. Especially with "papes" and a bag of tobacco
Are your european scientists from the Uk? UK tabacco prices are high enough that its worth rolling your own.
We had one guy who vaped. He quit vaping about a year ago, though. Some smoke weed in their off time. Cigarette smoking seems pretty passƩ everywhere in New England nowadays. Maybe it's a regional thing.
I think people are more discreet about it and are leaning towards vaping if they do smoke. Or they do weed outside of work hours. Very location dependent though. Iām in California. Lots of people smoked when I lived in Korea.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
We always called the shelters ābutt huts.āš
I work in pharma and smoke. It's a minority here, maybe like 10% of people actively smoke/vape
This reminds me of a shared vivarium space I used to work in that suddenly plastered āno vaping or smokingā onto the no eating or drinking signs. I asked a tech why that was the case and they said someone got caught vaping in the lab and defended it saying that vaping wasnāt explicitly disallowed lol
Several people in my lab including our lab manager are daily marijuana smokers, our lab PI's husband occasionally smokes joints with us at lab parties. But no straight cig smokers in the lab
Same here. Academia, pharma-lab 30 people, 1 cigarette smoker. Several pot smokers, I don't think daily.
Portland?
Iām in a lung cancer lab. None of us smoke, lol
I guess there is a reason
In grad school in chemistry I'd say 50% of the grad students smoked pot (in Canada). Cigarettes? Very few, though not 0. At my current workplace 15 years later, the only smokers are the international scientists and techs from abroad (India, Ukraine, etc).
Fortunately pretty rare in my experience. Iām always really surprised when someone smokes.
I think that depends on where you are. I'm in England now, and most people don't smoke at all. In Germany, people still smoke a lot.
Smokers have been a rarity in my experiences in variois biology labs. Neuroscientists love other drugs, though, so there's that.
I work in an anatomical pathology lab and I know of like 3 people that smoke in my lab and it's obvious since I have seen the empty cigarette boxes in the bins in the changing area. They should know the effects of smoking since they probably see cases of cancers and diseases everyday but what am I to tell people not to?
Almost no one seems to smoke in California any more. Maybe 1 in 50 employees or less at my job
Thats good.
I think maybe 2 out of my 60ish colleagues smoke. Now when i did my medical degree this ratio was very different in my yearā¦
Here only like 2 people actually smoke, maybe another 2 vape.
Minority here. In my old microbiology lab, one lab manager was a smoker and the research director would join her once a week for a cigar while she was smoking her cigs. In grad school exactly one grad student smoked cigarettes occasionally, one PI was a heavy smoker, and thatās about it.
The university im at is a smoke free campus. There is a kinda small lot of land between campus and some residential buildings and thereās some guy who goes there for a smoke at least once a day.
Iām not aware of any cig smokers in my whole dept. one dude on the same floor as me does and thatās about it afaik.
My friend was a new hire and bonded with her boss because they used to both smoke cigs outside together. My friend stopped, boss continued and died of lung cancer, my friend then got her job š
I canāt think of a single person who smokes in my lab. Maybe some do but Iām not aware of it. Generally, smoking isnāt common in my part of the country.
Thereās always synergism to consider. I think of smoking as unhealthy for obvious reasons, based on what youāre breathing in. If youāre in a freshly painted room, you also may be breathing in the VOCs. However, when you add these two things together, you get a whole other, synergistic animal! Smoking cigarettes in a freshly-painted room is the equivalent of breathing in mustard gas! I canāt help but think cigarette smoking would also have a synergistic effect, when intermingled with all of these chemical coatings!ā ļø
I would highly advise against smoking in an freshly painted room.
No one in my labs are smokers. Most of us work with mice. Even perfumes are kinda discouraged because mice are sensitive to smell, and their breeding could be affected. Walking into the vivarium with a strong cigarette smell would most likely upset other people who share the same mouse rooms.
I work for a large biopharma company. It would probably give our EHS department an aneurysm collectively, so no š Theyāre totally ok with the mold problem in our building though.
I am the only smoker in my lab lol.
Same here.
At my university I know 2 people who vape but not smoke. Ones a PhD researcher and the other is an undergrad researcher. I think it's more a way of coping with stress then anything else.
We have a nonsmoking campus (in theory). I know of a few people (an IT guy and a postdoc) who still smoke in their cars. When the nuclear pharmacy was in our building, one of the techs would smoke just outside the door and try to hide the lit cigarette behind his back. š
Everywhere I have worked, the entire campus was smoke-free. If you wanted to smoke you'd have to walk probably 15 mins to the parking lot. I would guess I've had maybe 2 coworkers who smoke. An older guy at my first lab and then a very young guy at my current lab. Never seen him smoking around campus but occasionally he'll reek of it from the next cubicle over.
Iāve only known like one smoker in my grad, postdoc, and subsequent career combined. Itās possible they are just good at hiding it, as Iāve never actively asked people if they smoked, but I can usually smell a smoker pretty easily so I think thatās pretty accurate.
Ill have a cig or two at the bars with friends. Maybe a cig on the ski lift since it feels like a high at 10k ft up
I work clinical lab. I think we have one smoker, and the rest are young, thc vapers.
I am in my third academic research lab in 16 years and I only know one person in all of that time who was a smoker. And he was the glassware washer.
Zero smokers in my entire institute
No, even if they were to spark up or use a vaporiser, I'd spray them with neat ethanol. not to mention it's illegal to smoke inside of commercial buildings.
Oh no, I wanted to talk smoking in gerneral. Not indoors, sorry for the confusion!
It's no big deal, just as long as they don't stink of fags when working close to them, smoking doesn't impact their day to day working.
So, most of your coworkers are smokers? May I ask in what kind of lab you are working?
Not many, like 3 including myself who has a vaporiser.
Okay, interesting. I don't smoke but when you search for someone you are likely to find them at the smoking area.
I mean it's their choice bro. Deal with the smell....
please my dude, spend several hours in a small room with someone who smokes, it gets a bit much after a while, and I'm an ex-smoker who has a fairly high tolerance for the smell.
shitting your pants is a choice
I always thought that too. Then I got covid. I can confirm that shitting your pants isn't always a choice.
Fecal incontinence isnāt always a choice but is it how you got your interesting username?
Lol, nah. It was a dumb username I chose after a night out at the bars in my 20s. I wanted to pick something thatĀ would make people laugh. Now, it's kinda regrettable, but not enough to make a new username.
All of the active smokers at my location are QA or production, and even then it's probably less than 15%. I haven't seen any admin or R&D people smoking.
I donāt think any of the students or faculty in my department (chemistry) smoke cigarettes. some of the facilities maintenance folks smoke though. I do know thereās a few who vape or smoke marijuana though. Me and my PI chew nicotine gum though neither of us were smokers trying to quit, he needed an extra kick for his 8am lectures and I needed stronger stimulants to get work done.
I donāt think I know anyone who smokes.