Can dead people talk? A new study has shown that human skeletal remains can tell us a lot about a person’s tobacco use during their lifetime even centuries after they died.
Scientists already know black stains on teeth and holes between teeth are signs of previous smoking in human skeletal remains. However, many skeletal remains have damaged or no teeth, making it difficult to know if these people smoked during their lifetime.
Dr. Badillo-Sanchez from the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester and his research team are developing a new way to estimate tobacco use by people who lived centuries ago.
Dr. Badillo-Sanchez and his team’s new method looks for specific chemical markers of tobacco use in the bones of human remains. Specifically, they look for signs that tobacco was processed, or metabolized, in the bones. If there are signs of metabolized tobacco in the skeleton, that means that person must have been exposed to tobacco smoke, likely through smoking.
This method of looking for chemical markers is similar to much thirdhand smoke residue research conducted by the Thirdhand Smoke Consortium, where researchers look for nicotine and other substances in thirdhand smoke residue in homes or cars after smoking ends.
To use this method with human skeletal remains, Dr. Badillo-Sanchez’s team first had to identify what chemicals could be markers of metabolized tobacco in bones. They did this by finding and comparing the bones of both people who were known to have and have not smoked during their lifetime.
The researchers used bones of people with black stains and pipe holes in the teeth as the bones of people known to have smoked. These stains and holes typically come from a clay pipe, a common way people smoked tobacco in the 18th century.
Since tobacco was not introduced in Europe until the 1500’s, any skeletal remains in graves marked before 1500 belong to people who did not smoke. The researchers used these pre-1500 bones as the known smokefree bones.
When comparing the bones, the researchers listed chemical compounds that they found only in the smoking group. These compounds are likely chemical markers of smoking, which can be further determined with additional research.
Using their new method, the researchers studied skeletal remains from the 18th and 19th centuries in the United Kingdom. Their findings suggest that upper class women in this period smoked frequently, challenging many previous accounts of smoking in the era.
Looking ahead, this new method has exciting potential for learning how people in previous centuries used tobacco and how tobacco use impacted their health. It is also a stark reminder of the profound impact of tobacco use on our body that remains detectable centuries later.
Click here to read the research study.
Click here to read a Science article about the study.
