Kill The Cigarette Before It Kills You

 

 The Shocking Ingredients In Cigarettes

 
If you think cigarettes are simply dried tobacco leaves rolled in paper, you’re about 599 ingredients off. The tobacco industry has become master mixologists with the additives. Some ingredients are added for flavor, but research has shown that the key purpose of using additives is to improve tobacco’s potency resulting in increased addictiveness–and the additives they choose to use are dreadful.

 

Cigarette Ingredients

 

Before you take that next drag, you may want to consider exactly what you’re putting into your body…

• Acetone: You may recognize this as the active ingredient in fingernail polish remover.
• Ammonia: A common ingredient in many cleaning products. Ammonia speeds up the delivery of nicotine to the brain, which keeps you addicted.
• Arsenic is used for rat poison.
• Benzene is a common ingredient in many plastics and has been linked with leukemia and blood disorders.
• Butane is a main ingredient in lighter fluid.
• Carbon monoxide enters your blood stream and takes the place of oxygen, causing less oxygen to be delivered to your brain, heart and vital organs.
• Cadmium is an extremely toxic metal commonly found in industrial workplaces, particularly where any ore is being processed or smelted. Cadmium is also found in batteries.
• Formaldehyde is used for embalming dead people.
• Hydrogen Cyanide is a colorless, volatile, and extremely poisonous chemical compound whose vapors have a bitter almond odor.
• Lead is a highly toxic metal that produces a range of adverse health effects.
• Nickel is a human carcinogen that is poisonous if ingested and causes gastrointestinal problems.
• Nicotine is the addictive drug in cigarettes.
• Polonium is a radioactive metallic element. The polonium present in a pack a day, provides the same radiation as 4 chest x-rays.
• Turpentine is also know as paint thinner and is extremely flammable.
• Whale Vomit is not a chemical, but is added to cigarettes for flavoring.

 

 

 

We remember hearing something about “the list” back in the 1990s when tobacco companies first started being taken to task for their dastardly ways, but seeing the list again now that we educated about chemistry and health, We are absolutely staggered. It’s amazing this isn’t in the news everyday. It’s bad enough that many of these ingredients are approved for use in food–but that they haven’t been tested for burning? When burnt, the whole mess results in over 4,000 chemicals, including over 40 known carcinogenic compounds and 400 other toxins. These include nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide, as well as formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, and DDT.

 

 

 

Health effects of tobacco

 

You know it’s bad when the Phillip Morris website has this posted on their homepage: Nearly 5,000 chemicals have been identified in tobacco smoke to date. Public health authorities have classified between 45 and 70 of those chemicals, including carcinogens, irritants and other toxins, as potentially causing the harmful effects of tobacco use.

 

 

According to Dr. and Mrs. Quit, also known as Lowell Kleinman, M.D., and Deborah Messina-Kleinman, M.P.H., from the Quit Smoking Center, cigarette flavors have gone through many changes since cigarettes were first made. Initially, cigarettes were unfiltered, allowing the full “flavor” of the tar to come through. As the public became concerned about the health effects of smoking, filters were added. While this helped alleviate the public’s fears, the result was a cigarette that tasted too bitter. (And filters do not remove enough tar to make cigarettes less dangerous. They are just a marketing ploy to trick you into thinking you are smoking a safer cigarette.

 

 

 

Cigarette burning at an extremely hot temperature, which allows the nicotine in tobacco to turn into a vapor so your lungs can absorb it more easily

 

 

 

The solution to the bitter-tasting cigarette was easy–have some chemists add taste-improving chemicals to the tobacco. But once they got rolling they figured out they could really maximize the whole addiction part, what a hook. They found that a chemical similar to rocket fuel helps keep the tip of the cigarette burning at an extremely hot temperature, which allows the nicotine in tobacco to turn into a vapor so your lungs can absorb it more easily. Or how about ammonia? Adding ammonia to cigarettes allows nicotine in its vapor form to be absorbed through the lungs more quickly. This, in turn, means your brain can get a higher dose of nicotine with each inhalation. Now that’s efficiency.

 

 

 

effectively addictive

 

For a start, here’s the who’s who of the most toxic ingredients used to make cigarettes tastier, and more quickly, effectively addictive:

Ammonia: Household cleaner.
Arsenic: Used in rat poisons.
Benzene: Used in making dyes, synthetic rubber.
Butane: Gas; used in lighter fluid.
Carbon monoxide: Poisonous gas.
Cadmium: Used in batteries.
Cyanide: Lethal poison.
DDT: A banned insecticide.
Ethyl Furoate: Causes liver damage in animals.
Lead: Poisonous in high doses.
Formaldehyde: Used to preserve dead specimens.
Methoprene: Insecticide.
Maltitol: Sweetener for diabetics.
Napthalene: Ingredient in mothballs.
Methyl isocyanate: Its accidental release killed 2000 people in Bhopal, India, in 1984.
Polonium: Cancer-causing radioactive element.

For the whole list of 599 additives used in cigarettes, see the BBC World service page What’s in a Cigarette.