why can’t we just take the carcinogens out of cigarettes to make them safe?
In: Chemistry
Smoke of all kind contains carcinogens, nicotine as well is a carcinogen. The reason people smoke is usually they try it, and get addicted, and can’t stop, which is because of nicotine. If there were no carcinogens there would be no smoke, or people using them after a first try.
Smoke, in and of itself, is carcinogenic. All smoke contains carcinogens. Some forms more than others, of course.
Yup inhaling products of combustion is always bad. That’s why vaping ain’t great either. Better to chew gum or use patches.
Some of the carcinogens may come from radioactive isotopes of phosphorus used to fertilize the plants as they grow. Sorting **atoms** by mass can be done, but is ridiculously expensive and really only done to enrich uranium in very small amounts relative to the amount of fertilizer used.
Some of the carcinogens may be byproducts of the preservation process of smoking the tobacco. Removing this step would reduce the flavor, and allow the tobacco to spoil after production.
Some of the carcinogens may be byproducts of burning the cigarette to smoke it. You can’t get rid of these without getting rid of the cigarette.
The tobacco itself is the carcinogen. It contains radioactive material that is depoistird into your lungs when you smoke. You can’t really do much about that, it’s a natural by-product of tobacco
There are more naturally produced brands of tobacco but even the most natural tobaccos still have carbon monoxide, arsenic, etc a lot of harmful stuff that’s inhaled when smoked. Other additives are usually placed in to keep the cigarette lit, you’ll find the natural tobaccos keep going out if you don’t smoke it consecutively to keep the ember lit
Some of the things that are bad/dangerous about cigarettes come from combustion (burning) that is part of smoking. Even if you removed any kind of chemical additives and just smoked tobacco, you’d still be inhaling the products of combustion, which are not good for your lungs.
The nicotine that makes people want to smoke/addicted to smoking is a carcinogen, so you’d be defeating the whole point.
E cigarettes are nicotine without tar. However, it is not certain that the filler chemicals that people have ben diluting the drug with are safe. Nicotine has bad effects itself but has not been proved to cause cancer.
One of the factors is that tobacco had a tendency to absorb a natural low level radioactive isotope of naturally occurring plutonium from the soil as it grows. Smoking can put that isotope inside you over a long period of time which can compound the effect of it’s radioactivity to a level that can cellular mutation which can lead to cancer.
This is what was explained to me by an instructor I had some years back and I may be remembering parts wrong but I think I got the gist right.
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