| The Tobacco Reference Guide
|
| by David Moyer, MD. |
| Chapter 19 Tobacco ingredients, additives, and radioactivity |
| globalink (artefact pour saut de ligne) |
| A poem relating to disclosure of tobacco ingredients was presented by Judy Knapp at |
| the Tenth National Conference on Nicotine Dependence in Minneapolis on October |
| 18, 1997: "Say you wanna bum some cadmium? Need a kick of arsenic? Gotta get |
| fried on formaldehyde? Can we loan ya a bit of ammonia? Can it go to your head a shot of lead?" |
| Tenth National Conference on Nicotine Dependence in Minneapolis on October |
| 18, 1997 |
| tobacco reference guideg (artefact pour saut |
| Alpha particles from polonium-210 are powerful mutagens, perhaps 100 times more |
| than equal number of rads of gamma radiation. The lungs, blood, and liver of smokers |
| contain a much higher concentration of polomium-210 than those of nonsmokers, and |
| the radiation dose to the lower lobe bifurcations of the lung is estimated to be up to 200 REM each 25 years. |
| NEJM, 273:1344, 1965 and 307:311, 1982 |
| tobacco reference guideg (artefact pour saut |
| Tobacco leaves concentrate radioactive polonium-210 and lead-210 from the |
| phosphate fertilizers that are commonly used in tobacco cultivation. C.R. Hill at the |
| Institute for Cancer Research in England suggested that natural fallout from radon 222 |
| might account for the radioactivity of tobacco smoke. R.T. Ravenholt of the Centers |
| for Disease Control hypothesized that the radioactive elements in tobacco smoke |
| might pass through the lungs and into the blood, causing cancers distant from the lung. |
| He believes that smokers are exposed to "far more radiation from the smoking of |
| tobacco than they are from any other source," and Dr. Joseph DiFranza states that the |
| radiation from inhaled smoke could account for half of all lung cancers in smokers. |
| Cancer Wars, p. 306 |
| tobacco reference guideg (artefact pour |
| Page 13 of 14 |
| globalink (artefact pour saut de ligne) |
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