What Is In Your Smokes?

Cigarette flavors have gone through many changes since they were first placed on the public market. When cigarettes were first manufactured they were unfiltered, which allowed the full flavor of the tar to come through. As the public became aware and concerned about the health effects of smoking, manufactures of cigarettes added filters to remove some of the "harmful" effects to the lungs. While this helped alleviate some of the public's fears and concerns about the harmful effects, it left the cigarette with a bitter taste.

Do Filters Work?

The filters that were added to the cigarette, by the manufactures, does not remove enough tar to make them less harmful. It is just a marketing trick to make you think you are smoking a safer cigarette. In fact, they do not filter out the numerous chemical additives that have been added to your cigarettes to make it "safer," "taste better" and "feel smoother."

As far as the bitter taste the filters caused, chemists decided to add taste-improving chemicals to the tobacco to make the taste more appealing. Many of the "flavor-enhancing" additives are coffee extract, vanilla, cocoa, and menthol, oil of cloves, caramel and sugar, which was added to make them more appealing to younger people. Unfortunately, there are more than 600 additives that can legally be added to tobacco products and some of these chemicals are know cancer-causing agents.

The cancer-causing chemicals are added to give enhancing qualities to the cigarettes. For example, cocoa produces a bromide gas that dilates the air passages of the lungs and helps to increase the absorption of the nicotine. Menthol is suspected to cause a numbing effect to the throat and reduces the irritation of the smoke, which enables the smoker to inhale easier. A chemical very similar to rocket fuel is added as a "burn enhancer" which keeps the tip of the cigarette burning at an extremely hot temperature. This burning process also allows the nicotine to turn into a vapor so your lungs can absorb it more easily. Additional chemicals are added that act on the brain and central nervous system to strengthen the nicotine's impact. This "cauldron of chemicals" invades the body's organ and tissues of smokers and non-smokers, adults and children, born and unborn, and have been known to cause cancer, lung disease, sexual impotence, heart disease, fetal growth retardation, and pollute the air we breathe.

Household Cleaner?

Most people prefer to use ammonia to clean their windows and toilet bowls or to strip the wax off the kitchen floor. You may be surprised to learn that the tobacco industry had found some additional use for this household cleaner. By adding ammonia to your cigarettes, it quickly turns the nicotine into a vapor form that can be absorbed through your lungs more quickly. This then causes your brain to get a higher dose of nicotine with each puff of the cigarette you take.

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

• Fungicides and pesticides-Cause many types of cancer 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.
  
  
• Polonium-210-A naturally radioactive metallic element associated with numerous cancers.

If it upsets you to think that so many chemicals have been added to the cigarettes that you enjoy so much, you should be. The thought of taking an addictive product and making it more addictive is extremely unsettling. Many of these chemicals were added to make you better able to tolerate toxic amounts of chemicals in your cigarette smoke. They were added without regard to your health and with the intention of keeping you addicted. It was recently discovered that the cigarettes you smoke are only about 40% tobacco, and 60% other "additives."

As the tobacco industry saying goes, "An addicted customer is a customer for life, no matter how short that life is." Make sure you have the last laugh and chose not to smoke or to quit. Regardless of the numerous amounts of chemicals in your cigarettes, not smoking is your best option and is the wisest health choice you can make of your life.

There are number of websites on the Internet where you can find helpful and reliable advice on quitting the tobacco habit, the U.S. Surgeon General's smoking cessation program at www.surgeongeneral.gov/tobacco and Clearing the Air by the National Institutes on Health at www.quitsmoking.com. are two sites that offer a variety of options and advice.