Yellowish discoloration on the ends of your fingers from holding a cigarette is known as “smoking fingertips.” It’s often a sign of long-term or unfiltered tobacco use.

The health effects of cigarettes are significant. Smoking can harm almost every part of your body — including your skin.

Over time, smoking can cause cosmetic changes to your appearance, staining your skin from exposure to the chemicals that make up tobacco tar.

Smoking fingertips are a type of skin discoloration related to smoking. They’re characterized by yellow-brown staining on areas of the fingers regularly exposed to tobacco smoke.

Smoking fingertips, smoker’s hands, and smoker’s mustache are all common examples of cosmetic conditions that develop over time from exposure to the chemicals in cigarette smoke (often called cigarette tar).

All of these conditions affect parts of your body that remain in close contact with smoke, whether you’re having a cigarette or cigar, or smoking a pipe.

Stained skin is just one way cigarettes can affect your hands and fingers. Many of the complications from smoking can manifest in the hands, such as premature aging, delayed wound healing, and increased risk of infections and inflammatory skin conditions.

According to the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, smoking can also lead to vascular changes that diminish blood flow, sometimes to the point of needing fingers amputated.

It can make symptoms of pain conditions like carpal tunnel more severe and may worsen nerve symptoms, like tingling and numbness.

Because smoking can impair bone healing, fractures and breaks in your hand may not heal correctly, creating persistent pain, stiffness, or loss of function.

How does smoking affect the skin?

Smoking can cause premature aging, which includes fine lines, wrinkles, age spots, and dryness.

But smoking doesn’t just cause cosmetic changes. It can change your skin at the cellular level.

Smoking can cause the following damage to the skin:

While the exact reason behind these changes isn’t well understood, most theories suggest premature aging from tobacco is caused by:

  • poor blood flow
  • a breakdown of elastic skin fibers
  • an increase of cell-damaging particles called free radicals

The appearance of smoking fingertips can vary from person to person, but it generally involves a yellow-brown stain on the tips of the thumb, index finger, and middle finger.

If you regularly position your cigarette between the index finger and the middle finger only, you may notice the stain is more concentrated between the first and second joint on those two digits.

Nail staining may also be involved. Tobacco-stained nails are sometimes referred to as harlequin nails.

Do smoking fingertips impact your health?

Smoking fingertips aren’t a health concern, but they may be a sign of unfiltered smoking or long-term smoking — both of which can increase your risk of smoking-related side effects.

Smoker’s finger disease isn’t the same as smoking fingertips.

Smoker’s finger disease refers to Buerger’s disease. Doctors don’t know exactly what causes it, but it is strongly linked to tobacco use.

Researchers believe that tobacco hypersensitivity creates an immune reaction in the lining of your blood vessels in Buerger’s disease. This reaction can cause swelling and vascular impairment, with symptoms such as:

  • cold hands, feet, or both
  • pale, blue, or red fingers and toes
  • finger and toe sores
  • burning or tingling hand or foot pain
  • leg, ankle, or foot aches (commonly in the arch of the foot)

On average, it takes 40–56 days for the epidermis, or the top layer of skin, to turn over. However, the older you are, the longer it takes for your body to create new skin cells.

Some websites claim various home remedies, such as toothpaste, lemon juice, and apple cider vinegar, can remove smoking fingertips. However, there is no research to back up any of these home remedies’ effectiveness.

To get rid of smoking fingertips permanently, you would need to quit smoking.

Can you prevent smoking fingertips through handwashing?

It sounds reasonable that proactively washing your hands will keep stains at bay, but soap and water between cigarettes may not be enough.

Research suggests that regular handwashing doesn’t completely remove tobacco residue on your hands, even when it’s not yet visible.

The benefits of smoking cessation on your vascular health are almost immediate.

Within 20 minutes, your blood pressure and heart rate generally drop. After 12 hours, the amount of carbon monoxide in your blood is expected to normalize.

Within 2–12 weeks, many of your blood vessels may heal, and your overall circulation will likely improve.

Not all vascular damage from smoking is reversible, but within 4 years of quitting, experts suggest your risk of stroke becomes equal to that of nonsmokers.

Smoking fingertips can be a sign of long-term smoking or unfiltered tobacco use. Smoking fingertips are yellowish stains on the fingers used to hold your cigarette, pipe, or cigar.

Smoking fingertips may be aesthetically distressing, but they’re not as serious as other hand and finger complications from smoking, like Buerger’s disease, poor circulation, or impaired bone healing.

If you need help quitting smoking, you can visit Smokefree.gov for support.