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

Question

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

Answer 1

Almost everything can be toxic. Poison is often the dose not the substance. You get many if not all of the same chemicals sitting around camp fire. Difference is that most people only sit around a camp fire for a few hours at a time now and then. Not 5-6 times a day almost every day for decades.

Cigarettes are bad for you cause constantly crop dusting your lungs with particulate matter in the form of smoke or dust is bad for you.

This is why coal miners get sick. This is why wood workers get sick if they don’t wear masks or use their chemicals in a well ventilated area. This is why people who work at foundries get sick. This is why people who just naturally live in dusty areas get sick. Hell people from before the advent of modern lighting were more susceptible to lung related illness cause of spending so much time around their indoor fireplace, candles, kerosene lamps, etc.

Literally any scenario that has you routinely inhaling dust or smoke for hours a day most days for years on end, its going to have a high risk of causing cancer or some other pulmonary illness.

The problem with cigarettes is far more to do with their addictive nature and frequency of consumption more so than what is actually in them. Now it’s true that technically there is no “safe” level of inhaling any kind of smoke. Even smoking a little does technically increase your risk, but the risk of only a little occasional smoking is negligible against the background noise of just living in the world and breathing the air most of us do. The real harm comes from addiction and frequency. Constantly dusting your lungs. That’s the danger.