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.
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