![Danny Katz.](/web/20170331112046im_/http://www.watoday.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/0/b/7/0/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gtsyu3.png/1488502593839.jpg)
Q: My brother-in-law is a smoker and, when visiting, will come inside after a ciggie and ask to hold my new baby. Would it be rude to ask him to wash his hands first? M.M., RICHMOND, VIC
A: Babies are like new cars: they come home from the showroom with that delicious, new-baby smell. It's an intoxicating blend of frangipani, vanilla and fairy floss – except in the neck folds, where they smell like fermented Korean shrimp paste (outer neck is fine, but don't delve, you'll regret it).
![Illustration by Simon Letch.](/web/20170331112046im_/http://www.watoday.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/s/y/u/y/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gtsyu3.png/1485048602383.jpg)
Smokers are like old cars: they've got that rancid, rent-a-bomb reek of stale cigarettes, lingering B.O. and something mildly herbal from a road trip to North Queensland that only got as far as Mullumbimby. Instinctively, no parent wants their sweet-scented baby tainted with stuffy-smoker stench: newborns and nicotine are not a great combo, in the same way you don't mix newborns and bull terriers, or newborns and Nutribullet 1000-watt fruit 'n' veg extractors.
But sometimes parents don't have a choice: friends or loved ones who are smokers just want to have a hold of the baby – it's not like they're smoking at the same time, puffing in the baby's face and ashing in its fontanel dip.
If you start asking smokers to wash their hands, you really need to ask everyone: we're all contaminated with grime, secretions, fecal traces and at least six different types of escalator-handrail E. coli. So I think you should just let your brother-in-law hold the baby without hand-washing, and if it really worries you, swaddle the kid in a Hazmat bunny rug and pop on a fume-resistant baby bonnet. Maybe also leave something in the baby's nappy so that when the two of them cuddle up close, they cancel out each other's reek.
guru@fairfaxmedia.com.au