ELi5: Why do cigarettes have so many toxic substances in them? Surely you don’t need rat poison to get high?

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Not just rat poison, but so many of the ingredients just sound straight up unnecessary and also harmful. Why is there tar in cigarettes? Or arsenic? Formaldehyde? I get the tobacco and nicotine part but do you really need 1001 poisons in it???

EDIT: Thanks for answering! I was also curious on why cocaine needs cement powder and gasoline added in production. Snorting cement powder does not sound like a good idea. Then again, snorting cocaine is generally not considered a good idea… but still, why is there cement and gasoline in cocaine??

In: Biology

15 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

They key point here is that most of the toxins in cigarettes are created while smoking because the combustion is incomplete. So there is a mess of unoxidized stuff – some highly reactive – in the smoke. If combustion went to completion – the nicotine would burn along with all other compounds and you be breathing some CO2 in nitrogen. 

No one adds formaldehyde to cigarettes, it gets created. 

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