What’s in a cigarette?
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News from Lake County Health Department
How many products do we consume where we don’t know what’s in them? Cigarettes are one product that has many chemical additives, but no label on the side listing what those additives are.
In 1994, five of the major tobacco companies – American Tobacco Company, Brown and Williamson, Liggett Group, Inc., Philip Morris, Inc., and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company – submitted a list of 599 additives that were approved by the U.S. Government for use in the manufacture of cigarettes.
Every smoker should Google this as the list is astounding. Of concern, these ingredients are approved as additives for foods, but were not tested by burning them, and it is the burning of many of these substances that changes their properties, often for the worse. Carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen cyanides and ammonia are all found in cigarette smoke. More than 4,000 chemical compounds are created by burning a cigarette, and at least 69 of these are known to cause cancer.
While the list is too extensive to put here, listed below are some of the more common ones that are on the American Lung Association’s website (www.lung.org ):
• Acetone – found in nail polish remover
• Acetic Acid – an ingredient in hair dye
• Ammonia – a common household cleaner
• Arsenic – used in rat poison
• Benzene – found in rubber cement
• Butane – used in lighter fluid
• Cadmium – active component in battery acid
• Carbon Monoxide – released in car exhaust
• Formaldehyde – embalming fluid
• Hexamine – found in barbecue lighter fluid
• Lead – used in batteries
• Naphthalene – an ingredient in moth balls
• Methanol – a main component in rocket fuel
• Nicotine – used as an insecticide
• Toluene – use to manufacture paint
• Vinyl chloride – used in plastic pipes
You might ask why some of these chemicals are added during the manufacture of cigarettes. Formaldehyde is added as a preservative, benzene is used as an adhesive to seal the paper, vinyl chloride is picked up in the smoke passing through the filter and ammonia helps the nicotine to be absorbed more quickly. Formaldehyde, vinyl chloride and radioactive polonium 210 are all listed as carcinogens (known to cause cancer) in the 2010 Surgeon General’s Report, “Chemicals in Tobacco Smoke.”
If you are looking for a reason to quit smoking, try printing out the list of 599 chemical additives from the Department of Health and Human Services and hanging it on your fridge. Nicotine, the addictive ingredient in the tobacco leaf, causes the heart rate to speed up, hardens and narrows the arteries, and is the reason people often get cardiovascular disease, which can lead to heart attack. Heart disease is the number-one killer in this country and tobacco use remains the number-one cause of preventable death in this country. If you would like information on quitting, call the Montana Tobacco Quit Line at 1-800-QUIT-NOW, or go to www.QuitNowMontana.com. Up to eight weeks of free nicotine replacement therapy is available, and there are great medication discounts too, free information and expert quit coaches to help you succeed.
