Chapter 19 Tobacco ingredients, additives, and radioactivity

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"Cigarettes contain ingredients so toxic that you could not dump them in a landfill

under the federal environmental laws."

Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) (Reuters, April 9, 1994)

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Tobacco plants are grown in soils with high phosphate fertilizers that are naturally

contaminated with the alpha-particle emitting radionuclide polonium-210. In one year,

the average smoker will irradiate the bronchial epithelium with 8 to 9 rem, the

equivalent dose of radiation from 250 to 300 chest x-ray films per year.

Pediatrics, September 1993, p. 464

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"Tobacco smoke is chemically complex and is usually analyzed in two parts, the

particulate or solid and the gaseous phase. Some 4720 separate compounds have

already been identified in the smoke. The gaseous phase contains many chemicals

that are well known: carbon monoxide (5 percent), carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide,

ammonia, formaldehyde, benzene and hydrogen cyanide; the particulate phase

includes nicotine, phenol, naphthalene and cadmium among other compounds. The

compounds in the particulate phase, excepting nicotine, are collectively called tar. The

higher the nicotine yield, the higher the tar yield and vice versa. In the particulate

phase, the free nicotine is suspended on minute droplets of tar..."

Tobacco in History, p. 5

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The arsenic content of American tobacco was quite high until the early 1960's

because of the use of arsenic-containing insecticides used on tobacco farms.

Bowen's disease of the skin is associated with arsenic ingestion, and in a medical

practice with 16 patients with the disorder, eleven had been smokers in the 1950's.

Cutis, July 1996, p. 65

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Thursday, July 06, 2000

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