my biology textbook says that there are over 60 carcinogens in cigarettes that cause cancer, but can’t we take them out? aren’t people just addicted to the nicotine? couldn’t we just put nicotine and some sort of smoke producing substance that isn’t a carcinogen and leave it at that
Edit: Thank you for the answers, everyone!
In: 43
E-cigarettes are basically that. Nicotine, plus a carrier fluid (usually propylene glycol and/or glycerine), and some flavorings. Except there’s no smoke involved – it doesn’t get hot enough to actually burn anything, at least not in significant quantities.
The problem with cigarettes is that the smoke itself contains carcinogens, and this is true for essentially any organic material that is burned. Wood smoke, cannabis smoke, even over-toasted bread. When carbon-based materials burn, you never have complete, clean combustion down to CO2 and water vapor, unless you have an extremely hot fire. And several of those partially-combusted byproducts that make up smoke, like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are carcinogenic.
Edit: low molecular weight carbon-based fuels like natural gas and propane do burn quite cleanly. Large amounts of smoke are mostly from solid materials combusting
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