Chapter 19 Tobacco ingredients, additives, and radioactivity

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"Tobacco smoke is an aerosol of droplets (particulates) containing water, nicotine

and other alkaloids, and tar. Tobacco smoke contains several thousand different

chemicals, many of which may contribute to human disease. Major toxic chemicals in

the particulate phase of tobacco include nicotine, benzopyrene and other polycyclic

hydrocarbons, N-nitrosonornicotine, polonium-210, nickel, cadmium, arsenic, and

lead. The gaseous phase contains carbon monoxide, acetaldehyde, acetone,

methanol, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen cyanide, acrolein, ammonia, benzene,

formaldehyde, nitrosoamines, and vinyl chloride. Tobacco smoke may produce illness

via systemic absorption of toxins and/or by local pulmonary injury by oxidant gases."

Cecil Textbook of Medicine, 1996 edition, p. 34

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American smokers inhale 11 million pounds, or 5500 tons, of tar into their lungs each

year (computed at 500 billion cigarettes with 10 milligrams of tar each, probably a low

estimate for actual tar delivery per cigarette.)

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Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that are implicated in smoking-induced cancers

also appear to have atherogenic (plaque-forming) activity.

Cigarettes, p. 28

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Radioactive constituents are present in both tobacco and tobacco smoke. The

radioisotopes lead-210 and polonium-210 may contribute to the carcinogenicity of

cigarette smoke. The radiation dose from polonium-210 in cigarettes has been

variously estimated at one rad per year, 8 rem per year, and 80 to 100 rads over a

lifetime.

Clinics in Chest Medicine, December 1991, p. 633

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Thursday, July 06, 2000

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