Have You Ever Wondered What's In a Cigarette?

Cigarette Ingredients
Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including 43 known cancer-
causing (carcinogenic) compounds and 400 other toxins. These cigarette
ingredients include nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide, as well as
formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, and DDT.

Nicotine is highly addictive. Smoke containing nicotine is inhaled into the

lungs, and the nicotine reaches your brain in just six seconds.

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While not as serious as heroin addiction, addiction to nicotine also poses

very serious health risks in the long run.

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Nicotine in small doses acts as a stimulant to the brain. In large doses, it's a
depressant, inhibiting the flow of signals between nerve cells. In even larger
doses, it's a lethal poison, affecting the heart, blood vessels, and hormones.
Nicotine in the bloodstream acts to make the smoker feel calm.

But visible smoke contributes only 5-8% to the total output of a cigarette.
The remaining bulk that cannot be seen makes up the so-called vapor or
gas phase of cigarette "smoke.

As a cigarette is smoked, the amount of tar inhaled into the lungs increases,
and the last puff contains more than twice as much tar as the first puff.
Carbon monoxide makes it harder for red blood cells to carry oxygen
throughout the body. Tar is a mixture of substances that together form a
sticky mass in the lungs.

Most of the chemicals inhaled in cigarette smoke stay in the lungs. The
more you inhale, the better it feels—and the greater the damage to your
lungs. You can ask anyone working on bachelors degree in any medical
field and they will be able to tell you what damage smoking does to the
lungs.

What's In Cigarette Smoke?

Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including 43 known cancer-

causing (carcinogenic) compounds and 400 other toxins. These include
nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide, as well as formaldehyde, ammonia,
hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, and DDT.

Nicotine is highly addictive. Smoke containing nicotine is inhaled into the

lungs, and the nicotine reaches your brain in just six seconds.

Nicotine in small doses acts as a stimulant to the brain. In large doses, it's a
depressant, inhibiting the flow of signals between nerve cells. In even larger
doses, it's a lethal poison, affecting the heart, blood vessels, and hormones.
Nicotine in the bloodstream acts to make the smoker feel calm.

As a cigarette is smoked, the amount of tar inhaled into the lungs increases,
and the last puff contains more than twice as much tar as the first puff.
Carbon monoxide makes it harder for red blood cells to carry oxygen
throughout the body. Tar is a mixture of substances that together form a
sticky mass in the lungs.

Most of the chemicals inhaled in cigarette smoke stay in the lungs. The
more you inhale, the better it feels—and the greater the damage to your
lungs.

Cigarette Maker Now Lists Ingredients

For the first time, an American tobacco company has begun listing long-secret
ingredients contained in its cigarettes directly on the label. Yesterday, Liggett Group
Inc. introduced cartons that the company plans to begin using that list the
ingredients in its L&M cigarettes, including molasses, phenylacetic acid and the oil
of the East Indian mint called patchouli. The move comes as the state of
Massachusetts is trying to compel disclosure of all ingredients by all cigarette
makers, an effort that other major tobacco companies are fighting.

Liggett, which broke with the industry by signing the first settlements ever
with states and private attorneys suing it, supports the Massachusetts effort
as well. "Liggett believes that its adult consumers have a right to full
disclosure," Liggett head Bennett S. LeBow said in a statement. Along with
blended tobacco and water, the 26-item L&M list includes high fructose corn
syrup, sugar, natural and artificial licorice flavor, menthol, artificial milk
chocolate and natural chocolate flavor, valerian root extract, molasses and
vanilla extracts, and cedarwood oil. Less familiar additives include glycerol,
propylene glycol, isovaleric acid, hexanoic acid and 3-methylpentanoic acid.

Some 600 ingredients are used in American cigarettes, but a Liggett

spokesman said the L&M statement was a "quite exhaustive list" of every
ingredient used in that brand.

Ingredients in tobacco products have never been proved harmful --

especially when compared with the many toxins found in tobacco smoke
itself. But activists have long pushed for disclosure of the ingredients, in part
because consumers tend to be more wary of risks imposed upon them by
others than of the risks they knowingly choose.

The companies have provided lists of ingredients to the federal Department

of Health and Human Services for more than a decade, but government
officials are legally not allowed to release the information. The industry also
presented a composite list of 599 additives to congressional investigators in
1994, but that was never officially made public.

David Remes, an attorney who represents the four other tobacco companies
challenging the state of Massachusetts, said the case comes down to the
industry's right to protect its trade secrets.

Lowell Kleinman, M.D., and Deborah Messina-Kleinman, M.P.H.

drkoop.com Health Columnists

Cigarette flavors have gone through many changes since cigarettes were
first made. Initially, cigarettes were unfiltered, allowing the full "flavor" of the
tar to come through. As the public became concerned about the health
effects of smoking, filters were added. While this helped alleviate the
public's fears, the result was a cigarette that tasted too bitter.

Filters Don't Work

Filters do not remove enough tar to make cigarettes less dangerous. They
are just a marketing ploy to trick you into thinking you are smoking a safer
cigarette.

The solution to the bitter-tasting cigarette was easy -- have some chemists
add taste-improving chemicals to the tobacco. Unfortunately, some of these
chemicals also cause cancer.

But not all of the chemicals in your cigarettes are there for taste
enhancement. For example, a chemical very similar to rocket fuel helps
keep the tip of the cigarette burning at an extremely hot temperature. This
allows the nicotine in tobacco to turn into a vapor so your lungs can absorb it
more easily.

Toilet Bowl Cleaner?

Most people prefer to use ammonia for things such as cleaning windows
and toilet bowls. You may be surprised to learn that the tobacco industry has
found some additional uses for this household product. By adding ammonia
to your cigarettes, nicotine in its vapor form can be absorbed through your
lungs more quickly. This, in turn, means your brain can get a higher dose of
nicotine with each puff.

The complete list of chemicals added to your cigarettes is too long to list
here. Here are some examples that will surprise you:

 Fungicides and pesticides -- Cause many types of cancers and birth

defects.
 Cadmium -- Linked to lung and prostate cancer.
 Benzene -- Linked to leukemia.
 Formaldehyde -- Linked to lung cancer.
 Nickel -- Causes increased susceptibility to lung infections.

If you are angry that so many things have been added to the cigarettes you
enjoy so much, you should be. Many of these chemicals were added to
make you better able to tolerate toxic amounts of cigarette smoke. They
were added without regard to your health and with the intent to keep you
addicted. As the tobacco industry saying goes, "An addicted customer is a
customer for life, no matter how short that life is."

Make sure that you have the last laugh. Regardless of the countless
chemicals in your cigarettes, quitting is always your option.

Perhaps this list of ingredients that are found in cigarettes is

enough to make you want to quit smoking for good!

There are more than 4,000 ingredients in a cigarette other than tobacco.
Common additives include yeast, wine, caffeine, beeswax and chocolate.
Here are some other ingredients:

Ammonia: Household cleaner

Angelica root extract: Known to cause cancer in animals
Arsenic: Used in rat poisons
Benzene: Used in making dyes, synthetic rubber
Butane: Gas; used in lighter fluid
Carbon monoxide: Poisonous gas
Cadmium: Used in batteries
Cyanide: Deadly poison
DDT: A banned insecticide
Ethyl Furoate: Causes liver damage in animals
Lead: Poisonous in high doses
Formaldehiyde: Used to preserve dead specimens
Methoprene: Insecticide
Megastigmatrienone: Chemical naturally found in grapefruit juice
Maltitol: Sweetener for diabetics
Napthalene: Ingredient in mothballs
Methyl isocyanate: Its accidental release killed 2000 people in Bhopal, India
in 1984
Polonium: Cancer-causing radioactive element

What's in a Cigarette?
by K. H. Ginzel, M.D.

For those who still don't know — let me emphatically state that cigarette
smoking is a true addiction! To grasp this well-documented fact, one really
doesn't have to study all the supporting scientific evidence. One simply
needs to consider that no other drug is self-administered with the
persistence, regularity and frequency of a cigarette. At an average rate of
ten puffs per cigarette, a one to three pack-a-day smoker inhales 70,000 to
200,000 individual doses of mainstream smoke during a single year. Ever
since its large scale industrial production early in this century, the popularity
of the modern cigarette has been spreading like wildfire. Here is the first,
and perhaps the most significant answer to the title question: Addiction is in
a cigarette.

Probing into what makes a cigarette so irresistible, we find that much of the
recent research corroborates earlier claims: It is for the nicotine in tobacco
that the smoker smokes, the chewer chews, and the dipper dips. Hence,
nicotine is in a cigarette.

In contrast to other drugs, nicotine delivery from tobacco carries an ominous

burden of chemical poisons and cancer-producing substances that boggle
the mind. Many toxic agents are in a cigarette. However, additional toxicants
are manufactured during the smoking process by the chemical reactions
occurring in the glowing tip of the cigarette. The number is staggering: more
than 4,000 hazardous compounds are present in the smoke that smokers
draw into their lungs and which escapes into the environment between puffs.

The burning of tobacco generates more than 150 billion tar particles per
cubic inch, constituting the visible portion of cigarette smoke. According to
chemists at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, cigarette smoke is 10,000
times more concentrated than the automobile pollution at rush hour on a
freeway. The lungs of smokers, puffing a daily ration of 20 to 60 low to high
tar cigarettes, collect an annual deposit of one-quarter to one and one-half
pounds of the gooey black material, amounting to a total of 15 to 90 million
pounds of carcinogen-packed tar for the aggregate of current American
smokers. Hence, tar is in a cigarette.

But visible smoke contributes only 5-8% to the total output of a cigarette.
The remaining bulk that cannot be seen makes up the so-called vapor or
gas phase of cigarette "smoke." It contains, besides nitrogen and oxygen, a
bewildering assortment of toxic gases, such as carbon monoxide,
formaldehyde, acrolein, hydrogen cyanide, and nitrogen oxides, to name just
a few. Smokers efficiently extract almost 90% of the particulate as well as
gaseous constituents (about 50% in the case of carbon monoxide) from the
mainstream smoke of the 600 billion cigarettes consumed annually in the
U.S. In addition, 2.25 million metric tons of sidestream smoke chemicals
pollute the enclosed air spaces of homes, offices, conference rooms, bars,
restaurants, and automobiles in this country. Hence, pollution is in a
cigarette.

The witch's brew of poisons invades the organs and tissues of smokers and
nonsmokers, adults and children, born as well as unborn, and causes
cancer, emphysema, heart disease, fetal growth retardation and other
problems during pregnancy. The harm inflicted by all other addictions
combined pales in comparison. Smoking-related illness, for example, claims
in a few days as many victims as cocaine does in a whole year. Hence,
disease is in a cigarette.

The irony is that many of the poisons found in cigarette smoke are subject to
strict regulation by federal laws which, on the other hand, specifically
exempt tobacco products. "Acceptable Daily Intake," ADI, is the amount of a
chemical an individual can be exposed to for an extended period without
apparent detriment to health.

In addition, there is the chemical burden from sidestream smoke, afflicting

smokers and non-smokers alike. Based on the reported concentrations in
enclosed, cigarette smoke-polluted areas, the estimated intakes of nicotine,
acrolein, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and formaldehyde peak at 200,
130, 75, 7, and 3 times the ADI, respectively. The high exposure to acrolein
is especially unsettling. This compound is not only a potent respiratory
irritant, but qualifies, according to current studies, as a carcinogen.

Regulatory policy aims at restricting exposure to carcinogens to a level

where the lifetime risk of cancer would not exceed 1 in 100,000 to
1,000,000. Due to a limited database, approximate upper lifetime risk values
could be calculated for only 7 representative cigarette smoke carcinogens.
The risk values were extraordinarily high, ranging from 1 in 6,000 to 1 in 16.
Because of the awesome amount of carcinogens found in cigarette smoke
and the fact that carcinogens combine their individual actions in an additive
or even multiplicative fashion, it is not surprising that the actual risk for lung
cancer is as high as one in ten. Hence, cancer is in a cigarette.

Among the worst offenders are the nitrosamines. Strictly regulated by

federal agencies, their concentrations in beer, bacon, and baby bottle
nipples must not exceed 5 to 10 parts per billion. A typical person ingests
about one microgram a day, while the smokers' intake tops this by 17 times
for each pack of cigarette smoked. In 1976, a rocket fuel manufacturer in the
Baltimore area was emitting dimethylnitrosamine into the surrounding air,
exposing the local inhabitants to an estimated 14 micrograms of the
carcinogen per day. The plant was promptly shut down. However eagerly
the government tries to protect us from outdoor pollution and the
carcinogenic risk of consumer products, it blatantly suspends control if the
offending chemical is in, or comes from, a cigarette. Hence, hypocrisy is in a
cigarette.

But there is still more in a cigarette than addiction, poison, pollution,

disease, and hypocrisy. A half century of aggressive promotion and
sophisticated advertising that featured alluring role models from theater, film
and sport, has invested the cigarette with an enticing imagery.

Imagery which captivates and seduces a growing youngster. The

youngster, indispensable for being recruited into the future army of
smokers, does not start to smoke cigarettes for the nicotine, but for the
false promises they hold. Hence, deceit is in a cigarette. In summary, no
drug ever ingested by humans can rival the long-term debilitating effects of
tobacco; the carnage perpetuated by its purveyors; the merciless
irreversibility of destiny once the victim contracts lung cancer or
emphysema; the militant denial on the part of those who, with the support of
stockholders and the sanction of governments, legally push their lethal
merchandise across borders and continents killing every year two and one-
half to three million people worldwide. All things added together: death is in
a cigarette.