What chemicals are added to cigarettes and what is their purpose?
In: Chemistry
There is a laundry list of chemicals that **may** be added to tobacco. There is no inclusive list, and you can’t ask the FDA, because they don’t regulate tobacco, because it’s not a food, and it’s not a drug. Cigarettes are regulated by the ATF. The chemicals fall into a number of broad categories:
* fire safety/fire retardants
* nicotine vaporization/increase effectiveness
* flavor
* processing aids (like stuff to retain humidity)
* stuff to keep you from getting sick from the other chemicals
That doesn’t mean that most of these chemicals WILL be added. There’s simply no knowing, because the manufacturers are not required to reveal their cocktails.
The chemicals that help vaporize nicotine and get your body to absorb more and faster, it’s not a nefarious plot to get you hooked – nicotine is the active ingredient. It’s the whole purpose of smoking in the first place, it’s what gets you high. It only so happens to be chemically addictive. They don’t even need to get you hooked, because we’re talking about someone having turned to smoking in the first place because THEY WANT IT. No one can claim to be naive about the negative effects of smoking in the US anymore.
Most of the chemicals known to have been used or are in use have not been tested on people in many important ways, let alone when burned then inhaled. No ethics board would approve such a study.
One thing that is not added to tobacco is tar. Tar is – by definition, the byproducts of combustion. Tar doesn’t go into cigarettes, it comes out of it because you lit it on fire. It’s the soot and ash and residues created.
Many of these chemicals and byproducts are known to be wildly carcinogenic. Chemical carcinogens are absolutely terrifying. You think standing 10′ from Fukushima sounds like a bad idea? That doesn’t hold a fucking candle. Now, ionizing radiation is itself terrifying, and if you’re getting the electrons stripped from your atoms, you’re already having a bad day. Don’t go standing near Fukushima. But carcinogenic chemicals are very stable, very chemically reactive, and can stay in your body for YEARS, unzipping your DNA like a prom dress.
Speaking of ionizing radiation, all American tobacco is fully fucking radioactive. That is because in 1954-55, the tobacco industry successfully lobbied for the right to use a phosphorous rich, porous mineral as a fertilizer – apatite. It’s the cheapest shit you can get. Great for plants. Radioactive as fuck, because over the geological timeframes those deposits formed, they filtered out just about every radioactive element from their environment that ever passed through it. You put it in the fields, it gets taken up by the plants. That stuff doesn’t just go away. Bulk tobacco is handled by logistics as a HAZMAT material – a truck load will set off radiation detectors. Everywhere a smoker smokes, in their house, in their car, outside by doors, is MEASURABLY more radioactive than background. You are getting irradiated EXACTLY like if you were standing at ground zero Hiroshima a couple weeks after the drop.
So that’s what makes 1st, 2nd, and 3rd hand smoke so dangerous. Many chemicals can be absorbed through the skin on contact. And even if you don’t touch it, or inhale it, you’re getting irradiated JUST BY BEING THERE. And carcinogens are a matter of exposure over time, it’s cumulative. The charts are calculated for adults, but babies have tiny little bodies, so exposure is so much worse for them, and they have to live with that for the rest of their lives.
I did the math once or twice, and a pack-a-day smoker is getting about 2,000 chest xrays a year exposure, the recommended safe maximum exposure limit is 4. If that scares you, as it should, remember – not a fucking candle danger to carcinogenic chemicals.
The fact is that in American school. we were all taught not to smoke. and the way they tried to tell you was that cigarette companies are intentionally putting like 500 substances they list as if they were additives. when the fact is that as tobacco is combusted the plant is decomposed into all those substances from the heat of being ignited.
The leaves get decomposed into all of the substances, and you get the stuff that makes up smoke. it gets deposited in your lungs as tar. which directly damages your lungs . and somewhere in that smoke is the nicotine that wasn’t destroyed from the heat of the flame.
Be aware those “there are 500 dangerous chemicals in cigarette smoke” ads are highly misleading. If you burn just about **any** organic material, a lot of chemicals get created, and most can be dangerous under the right circumstance, a campfire would produce about as many. Water and carbon dioxide are both “chemicals” and “dangerous”, and both are produced by cigarettes.
Make no mistake, smoking is really, really bad for you, but that statement is mostly propaganda design to use people’s ignorance about “chemicals” against them.
This doesn’t really answer your question because it’s not an added chemical, but I haven’t seen it mentioned yet so—tobacco leaves and smoke contain radioactive polonium. I just found out last year after watching a Veritasium video about radioactivity and I think it’s worth mentioning.
As a direct answer to your question, [here is a list of chemicals](https://www.rjrt.com/commercial-integrity/ingredients/cigarette-ingredients/) that RJ Reynolds uses in their cigarettes. You can also sort by brand and product for the chemicals. Most are flavorings; ammonium hydroxide (ammonia) is added to make the nicotine compound basic and more readily absorbed by your lungs.
Industry insider here: if you think the government would allow tobacco companies to make their products even more harmful by adding in extra chemicals, you are completely out of your mind. There is absolutely nothing added to tobacco, even menthol cigarettes get their flavour via scent absorption, whereby the tobacco basically absorbs menthol smell (try putting a pack of cigarettes next to a tire or incense for a day or two to prove to yourself how this works).
As has already been pointed out, the chemicals are released during combustion. They are inherent to tobacco, not added. None of this changes the fact that smoking is very bad for you and you should quit.
Lots, Google it. They are added to either entice us to buy more, or as aids in processing.
Also, marijuana smoke isn’t NEARLY as bad as tobacco smoke…don’t let these other, obviously very high meatheads tell you different.
Why do they even make this toxic trash then?
Cigarettes are almost entirely additives and they are there to make the nicotine more easily and quickly absorbed to make the drug more efficient and addictive. They use additives to make the molecule shorter so it absorbs easier into the bloodstream they change the ph so it is less abrasive on the lungs so it can be inhaled more deeply with less pain.
Modern cigarettes are not really tobacco. They take tobacco and liquify it to extract the nicotine. The solid matter left is made into paper and bleached. They then spray the liquified tobacco and additives called liquor back onto the paper made from the solids that are then chopped into the bits that fill the cigarette. Up to 1/3 of the product is recycled stale cigarettes that didn’t sell within a certain time.
So compared to say a hand rolled cigar which is literally rolled leaves a cigarette is as about as processed as conceivable. The twinkie to a pastry.
Solía trabajar en la fábrica de cigarrillos. Los rodaría a mano sobre mis hermosas caderas. También atamos los cigarrillos con PCP y una pizca de cocaína.
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