The premise here is simple: it may not be tobacco that's killing all those smokers. Has anyone else noticed that the Surgeon General's warnings never mention tobacco - only smoking? In this section I suggest that almost all smoking-related death is preventable without depriving people who like to smoke of the pleasure of doing so simply by eliminating chemical contaminants and poisonous synthetic materials and requiring manufacturers to use 100% natural tobacco leaf.
Copyright © 1996 by Bill Drake All Rights Reserved
This document was last revised on February 27,2002
Welcome to this site. Limited permission is hereby granted to individuals to print a single hard copy of these materials for personal reading, and to individual teachers and health professionals to make limited copies of these materials for distribution to students or patients. With these limited exceptions, none of these copyrighted materials may be printed or distributed, nor incorporated into any other body of work for distribution of any kind in any medium, without prior written permission from the author, which will be readily provided in most cases. Please contact bdrake@ktc.com
A proposition for reasonable people to consider - what if it hasn't been the tobacco in cigarettes that's been killing cigarette smokers?
This isn't a trick question, or a joke.
What if the combinations of pesticide residue contaminants on the tobacco and reconstituted tobacco portions of cigarettes and other so-called tobacco products are enough in themselves to explain a large proportion of cigarette-related disease and death?
Then what if residues from chemicals which are known carcinogens like benzene, hexane, and phosgene, used in the processing of industrial waste into synthetic smoking materials for cigarette manufacturing, and for manufacturing into smokeless and pipe "tobaccos", are enough to explain a large portion of the remaining cigarette-related death and disease?
I've been tracking the activities of the cigarette industry for almost twenty years and while my research resources have been limited, I've pieced together enough of a picture to convince me that it may very well not be the tobacco at all that's killing many, or even most smokers.
This document, and the associated documents on this site, are dedicated to raising the question of whether smoking-related disease and death can be largely prevented without having to try to change the desire to inhale volatilized plant materials for chemical satisfaction, an activity which appears to be hardwired into the pleasure centers of the brains of a significant portion of the human race, and just as firmly hardwired into the aversion centers of the brains of everyone else.
If it isn't the tobacco that's killing people, then almost all of the millions of deaths to come over the next 20-50 years from cigarettes and other so-called tobacco products are preventable by requiring that all tobacco products be manufactured from natural and uncontaminated tobacco.
It's important to know from the beginning, and to keep in mind as you review what I've assembled here as evidence, that American cigarettes stopped being 100% real leaf tobacco decades ago, and instead are manufactured using a combination of materials, including:
With the limited exception of US-grown tobacco, all of the other three materials used to manufacture cigarettes are normally and commonly contaminated with residues of pesticides which in themselves are well-established causal agents for breast, lung, and other cancers, for nervous system degeneration, for fetal malformation and irreversible genetic damage. In the 1985 Food Security Act the US government put a limited set of regulations in place to deal with pesticide residues on tobacco, requiring that imported Flue-Cured and Burley leaf tobacco be certified to have been grown using only pesticides registered under the US Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. As we'll see this is actually tricky wording, allowing enormous amounts of tobacco waste and scrap to slip through unregulated, and begging the question of what smoking even regulated pesticides does to human health.
The unbelievable fact is that very few of the common pesticide contaminants of tobacco appear to have ever been tested for their health effects when consumed by smoking. This isn't to say that the pesticides haven't been studied for their human health effects - they certainly have. The EPA, the FDA, the USDA, and others have all done extensive work with the tobacco pesticides. There has been a significant amount of published research on the human health effects of chronic sub-lethal exposure, and of exposure by inhalation, to many of the common tobacco product pesticide contaminants. There have also been oral/dermal toxicity studies which have shown many of the common tobacco contaminants are far more toxic when ingested orally than when absorbed through the skin, which implies similar toxicity when they are smoked. However, I've searched in vain for literature references to studies on what happens to these pesticides when they are volatilized by dry distillation and inhaled in combination.
By the time you finish browsing the evidence assembled here, this odd oversight probably won't seem all that strange any more.
In another section of this document I've included a broad range of references, but during 1996 alone, US medical/scientific teams have reported findings that ought to bring the issue of pesticide contamination of cigarettes into sharp focus:
For another angle on this increasingly likely link between environmental pesticides and human cancer, with strong implications for women smokers, see:
Davis D.L., Bradlow H.L., Wolff M., Woodruff T., Hoel D.G., Anton-Culver H. 1993, Medical hypothesis: Xenoestrogens as preventable causes of breast cancer. Environmental Health Perspectives v101 n372 p. 7
MacMahon, B. , Pesticide Residues And Breast Cancer? Journal of the National Cancer Institute: JNCI
April, 1994 v 86 n 8, p.572
Hunter, D. J., Kelsey, K. T., Pesticide Residues and Breast Cancer: The Harvest of a Silent Spring, Journal of the National Cancer Institute: JNCI
April 1993 v85 n8, p.598
Soto, Ana M., Chung, Kerrie L., Sonnenschein, Carlos, The Pesticides Endosulfan, Toxophene, and Dieldrin Have Estrogenic Effects on Human Estrogen-Sensitive Cells Environmental Health Perspectives: EHP
April 1994 v102 n4 p. 380
This list of tobacco pesticides is taken from current (3/96) figures published by North Carolina State University as part of an effort to inform North Carolina tobacco growers about the safe application of pesticides to tobacco crops. Note that this list is only partial, and refers only to some of the pesticides registered for use on tobacco in the US, not to the dozens of compounds being prepared and applied by illiterate fieldworkers in the tobacco companies' third world growing operations.
You can view the full site, containing a wealth of information about the tobacco industry's US pesticide practices, at http://ipmwww.ncsu.edu/Production_Guides/Burley/8INSECT.html
Note also that the table refers only to the LD 50 of the parent compounds, and not to the compounds created by the dry distillation of these parents during smoking. Its also important to keep in mind that LD 50 refers only to the chemical's ability to poison an individual, not its ability to give them cancer, destroy their genes, or cripple their babies. More about all that later.
| LD 50 in mg per kg body weight | |||
| Common Name | Trade Name | Oral Exposure | Skin Exposure |
| acephate | Orthene | 866 | 10,250 |
| carbaryl | Sevin XLR Plus | 725 | >2000 |
| carbofuran | Furadan | 11 | 10,200 |
| chloropicrin | Chlor-O-Pic100 | 250 | ---- |
| chlorphyrifos | Lorsban | 96 to 270 | 2000 |
| chlomazone | Command | 1,406 | >2000 |
| diazino | Diazinon | 300 to 400 | 3,600 |
| dichloropropene | TeloneII, Telone C-17 | 224 | 333 |
| disulfoton | Di-Syston | 2 to 10 | 6 to 20 |
| endosulfan | Thiodan, Endocide + | 30 | 359 |
| ethoprop | Mocap | 46.7 | 369 |
| fenamiphos | Nemacur | 5 | 80 |
| ferbam | Carbamate | > 17,000 | --- |
| flumetralin | Prime+ | 3,100 | --- |
| fonofos | Dyfonat | 8 to 17.5 | 25 |
| isopropalin | Paarla | >5,000 | --- |
| malathion | Cythion, Malathion | 1,000 | 4,100 |
| maleic hydrazide | Several | 3,900 | --- |
| metalaxyl | Ridomil | 669 | 3,100 |
| methomyl | Lannate | 17 | 5,880 |
| napropamide | Devrinol | 4,640 | --- |
| oxamyl | Vydate | 5.4 | 2,960 |
| parathion | Several | 2 | 73 |
| pebulate | Tillam | 921 to 1,900 | 4,640 |
| pendimethalin | Prowl | 2,679 | >2,260 |
| trichlorfon | Dylox, Proxol | 250 | >2,100 |
The Soil & Water Conservation Service, other USDA agencies, other government agencies, and university scientists all agree that people applying these pesticides are at risk. The literature is full of warnings such as this one.
"An LD50 is used to measure pesticide toxicity to humans and other mammals. An LD50 is an amount of a substance that will cause death in 50 percent of a target population. The lower the number, the more acutely (short-term) toxic. Care should be taken to minimize exposure to humans and wildlife from all pesticides. However, extreme caution should be taken with pesticides that have low LD50's such as Temik, Di-Syston, Nemacur, or Parathion."
"Protective clothing should always be worn when handling pesticides. Rubber gloves, boots, and goggles or face shields should always be worn when mixing pesticides. A respirator also should be used when handling pesticides that have a strong odor and are easily detected by smell. This is especially true with fumigants such as Telone C- 17 or Chloropicrin."
The really interesting aspect to all this material is that you will search in absolute vain for any reference to hazards to the smoker created by these pesticides. You read reams of materials about operator safety, environmental protection, keeping costs down and profits up, how to use these sprays and granular materials most effectively, what bugs, snails, molds and fungii are controlled by which chemicals - and not a whisper about the exposure of the smoker. Can it be that these folks think all this stuff simply disappears? That's highly unlikely, at least in the case of NCSU, University of Kentucky, and the others which are heavily involved in tobacco crop science and other related disciplines, because they all have conducted studies of pesticide residues in cigarettes, cigars, and other tobacco products, so they have to know that many of these pesticides are extremely persistent and do not disappear.
Pesticide contamination of tobacco products goes back to the beginning of pesticide use on agricultural crops. Since tobacco and cotton have always been the most profitable crop per-acre they have always received the bulk of the pesticides. The careful planning that went into making so-called tobacco products exempt from regulation under the Federal Pure Food, Drugs and Cosmetics Act of 1951, which regulates the safety of consumable products sold in the American marketplace, means that tobacco products have never been regulated or inspected for pesticide contamination except in gradual, limited ways beginning in approximately 1985. This in turn means significantly greater profit margins for the cigarette manufacturers, who can use tobacco grown in the cheapest parts of the world, sprayed with lightly regulated or unregulated chemicals to prevent as much insect destruction as possible, and brought into the US under the most favorable duty treatment for processing using unregulated chemicals and filler materials into tobacco sheet.
Many people aren't aware that tobacco products, including cigarettes, cannot be regulated by the U.S. government, or by the states, whose Pure Food, Drug & Cosmetic laws are carefully modeled on the federal law, which takes precedence. This means that the health authorities of your state have no authority at all to regulate tobacco products even if you demonstrate to them that there are banned pesticides in those products which are known human carcinogens in the dosages experienced by smokers and their families, and by the public in second-hand smoke. I know because I've tried it in testimony before the Texas Department of Health, the Texas Legislature, the Texas Attorney General - the states have no right to regulate cigarettes.
The fact that tobacco products, including some cigarette brands, ceased to be actual "tobacco" products many years ago does not seem to affect their continued exemption, which was based on the original argument that tobacco was neither a food, nor a drug, nor a cosmetic and therefore should be - and was- made exempt from regulation under the Act. They maintain this image with great care, because it enables them to continue to operate under cloak of secrecy.
Most recently in an enormous 2000 page document developed by the tobacco industry to oppose proposed FDA regulations, the companies argued that "like manufacturers of other consumer products based on agricultural commodities" they have to "design and manufacture their products so that they economically and reliably meet consumer preferences". As you can see if you visit the site at http://www.counsel.com/spotlight/tobacco/contents.html throughout this enormous legal brief the industry implicitly maintains the position that they are an industry based on manufacturing of agricultural products, when in fact the connection between natural tobacco and what is in their products is remote, at best.
The simple fact that the industry takes so much trouble, as you'll see throughout this site, to ensure that it can keep on freely using pesticides has not received much attention in the great debate over the hazards of smoking, but as someone said - follow the money. And the money trail points directly to the fact that the ability to use pesticides free from regulation during production seems to be as much of a profitability factor as margins on the manufactured product itself, if you judge by the activities of the industry over the years.
Many of the pesticides contaminating American tobacco products have never been registered in the US, because so few US cigarette brands actually contain American tobacco. When US brands of cigarettes claim to contain Virginia tobacco, they imply that it has been grown in Virginia, but Virginia-type tobacco is grown worldwide from Bangladesh to Zimbabwe to China, and becomes US cigarettes only after being drenched with unregulated mixtures of insecticides and fungicides in its tropical growing environment. While the leaf portions of this so-called Virginia tobacco must conform to US pesticide regulations, the stems, stalks and trash from processing don't, and many of the chemicals used on tobacco translocate to the stems, stalks, and roots.
Finally, when tobacco pesticides are sprayed they are routinely mixed with chemicals called "adjuvants". These chemicals are designed to make the spray go further, last longer, and cling to the plant better, and there is no regulatory control over these chemicals at all. In the US, manufacturers of these pesticide adjuvants must meet EPA manufacturing regulations, but there is no testing I'm aware of for their ultimate health impact on the smoker. However, the really hazardous picture emerges when you consider that overseas, where most of the tobacco consumed in the US is grown, there is no way to know what producers are using as adjuvants, which in the past have included a wide range of hazardous substances including benzene and asbestos.
For an interesting discussion of some of the issues around exposure to unregulated pesticide formulations see: Davis DL, Blair A, Hoel DG. (1992b). Agricultural exposures and cancer trends in developed countries. Environmental Health Perspectives 100:39 44.
The answer is that a lot of it winds up in European cigarettes. US-grown tobacco is actually relatively free of pesticide residues compared with the tobacco from third world sources, especially those which have come to be recognized as serious killers, so American tobacco goes into cigarettes manufactured for European markets where relatively strict regulations apply to tobacco products. Cigarettes manufactured for Europe must, by and large, be cleaner, must actually contain tobacco, must not contain a number of additives common in the US, and must be inspected and regulated by the health authorities- none of which applies in the US. (tobacco imports & exports)
It isn't as if US government officials were unaware of the concern of European health officials over the health risks presented by pesticide residues on tobacco. They are very concerned about pesticide residues when they affect the export of American tobacco, as the following comments demonstrate.
"Despite lower maleic hydrazide (MH) residues on U.S. tobaccos, German tobacco industry officials continue to express concern that the residue levels are excessive. The German cigarette industry is currently operating under an unofficial agreement with the German health authorities that limits the MH residues in finished cigarettes to less than 80 parts-per-million (ppm). US flue-cured tobacco imports from the 1980 and 1981 crops averaged 150 ppm in the most recent tests. Blending down MH residues on US tobaccos is becoming more difficult because of increased use of MH in other tobacco producing countries. German imports from Korea, Argentina, the Philippines, and Guatemala contain varying levels of MH residue. Industry officials also report that MH is being used in India and Zimbabwe, but no samples have been tested thus far. (in) USDA World Tobacco Situation March, 1982
The reason that American tobacco is cleaner than third-world tobacco is that gradually over the years certain insecticides have been banned for use on tobacco in the US, including most of the organo-chlorines like DDT, Endrin, Dieldrin, Heptachlor, Toxaphene. DDT, which gives of benzo-a-pyrene when burned, and Endrin, which is extremely carcinogenic and generates lethal combustion by-products, were almost universal contaminants of American cigarettes and tobacco products throughout the 1950's, 1960's, and most of the 1970's. When these potent pesticides were finally banned for use anywhere in the US, the giant American tobacco companies moved most of their own growing operations into the third world - so that they could keep right on spraying with DDT, Endrin, Aldrin, Dieldrin, Toxaphene, BHC, and the rest of the pesticides that continue to contaminate much of the world's tobacco supply. The most heavily contaminated tobacco leaf, of course, can't be sold in either Europe or the US, but that doesn't mean it is tossed and burned - it simply winds up in places like Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Russia, packaged as American cigarette brands promoting the happy illusion to young smokers that they are part of the sophisticated, sexy, successful American scene.
One of the major problems for smokers of tobacco grown in many poor countries is that the people applying the pesticides on these valuable export tobacco crops not only don't read or speak English but are likely to be illiterate in their own language. This means that when the time comes to load up the sprayer with bug-killing chemicals and head out into the fields, the guys mixing the chemicals may very well have no idea what's in the barrels they're mixing from.
If this sounds far-fetched, consider this piece from Progressive Farming (1/82)
"It's hard enough to get farmers in this country to apply pesticides properly. A field study conducted by the University of Nebraska found that "The biggest problem of agricultural chemicals is the people applying them". This study of 95 Nebraska farms by agricultural engineers from the University found that "six out of ten missed their estimated application rates by more than 10%. The average over-application rate was 35%, and the maximum 85%.
Farmers using granular products didn't do any better. Actually 60% of the users made application errors greater than an acceptable 10%. One in three over-applied by an average of 40%. "Reasons for the errors ranged from not reading label instructions to not knowing how much liquid was in the sprayer tank.
This study was conducted with American farmers in a region where the educational level of farm-owners is 13.5 years of school. These folks aren't dummies, yet they regularly over-apply dangerous chemicals. They are literate, understand chemicals to a degree, have access to government and industry information and assistance, and are checked carefully to make sure that their crops are within acceptable residue levels. Still, they over-apply by enormous amounts.
So what can we really expect from farm workers and independent farmers in developing nations? Consider this piece from Nature (9/92)
"Both farmers and extension agents in developing countries must normally rely on pesticide company salesmen for information on how to use agricultural chemicals - much as physicians in western countries rely on pharmaceutical company salesmen for information about new drugs."
For thousands of years the Native American peoples used tobacco, but many individuals smoked only for ceremonial reasons, and nobody ever noticed a difference in life expectancy rates between smokers and non-smokers. Within a single lifetime after tobacco was discovered in the Americas by European explorers its use had spread everywhere on earth, but tobacco pipe and cigar smokers didn't suddenly start dying by the millions in their mid-lives the way cigarette smokers do now. In fact for several hundred years tobacco smoking was, whether viewed as a pleasure or an obnoxious vice, not viewed as an automatic death sentence the way it has become today.
Tobacco smoking has always offended many different people and institutions, and in the early days its use was vigorously opposed. Laws were passed in most major societies forbidding tobacco use, up to and including a law calling for summary execution on the spot for tobacco smoking in 18th century Turkey. Nothing ever worked. Tobacco's enormous appeal has made it arguably the most heavily consumed substance after food in almost every society worldwide for hundreds of years. But for all these years, not enough more tobacco smokers died compared to non-smokers for anybody to seriously notice the difference.
Of course some people who smoked died, sometimes horribly, of the results of their behavior - but it wasn't just plain inevitable. Until cigarettes. Or more specifically, until cigarette manufacturers began using chemical and industrial technologies to manipulate both the product itself and consumer behavior in pursuit of even greater profitability. Just in case anyone hasn't noticed, cigarette smokers didn't start dying in remarkably large numbers until sometime after the 1950s.
In other words, smoking-related disease rates really start climbing about 20 years after the beginning of (1) intensive use of pesticides in tobacco production and (2) heavy, unregulated use of chemical and materials technologies in cigarette manufacturing processes.
While the debate over smoking and health has raged for many years now, it actually turns out that it isn't necessary to decide whether tobacco kills cigarette smokers. That can be decided later, after a generation or two have had a chance to smoke contaminant and additive-free 100% tobacco products. Isn't it enough to know that specific pesticide contaminants are present in sufficient concentrations in cigarette industry products to explain 100% of the primary and secondary smoking-related disease rates, along with the other relevant morbidity and mortality indices?
The pesticide residues which have contaminated generations of cigarette brands in the US include known supertoxins, carcinogens, neurotoxins, compounds specifically designed to produce genetic damage in fetal insect life forms, and pesticides designed to damage female insect reproductive systems. The actual amount of exposure received per cigarette by smokers to these chemicals is tiny - never enough to have any immediate effect, or to be detectable by taste or smell - the cigarette companies even back in the 1950s the companies were spending millions making sure that pesticide residues aren't detectable by the smoker through what they call "off-flavor".
Insecticide Residues as a Source of Off-Flavor in Tobacco, Townes, H.K., Tobacco Science, 146 (26): pp 24-26, 1958
However, long-term exposure, puff after puff, to exquisitely tiny amounts of these pesticides burned in combination with each other, and to their combustion by-products, does create a syndrome called "Chronic sub-lethal exposure".
Medical and scientific literature, and pesticide industry technical literature are each quite clear on the effects of chronic sublethal exposure to pesticides such as Toxaphene, Heptachlor, DDT, BHC, and Dieldrin known to have been in generations of American cigarettes - such exposure unequivocally causes the diseases which kill cigarette smokers. The intended victims of these chemicals are bugs which damage valuable tobacco crops, especially in third-world countries. However, since the cigarette industry uses heavily contaminated foreign tobacco waste, stems and stalks as raw materials for its high technology manufacturing processes, literally dozens of these pesticide residues are gasified and inhaled hundreds of times a day by cigarette smokers, and often their families, friends, and coworkers.
A number of the pesticides present in cigarettes are known to cause cancer, neurological disease, miscarriage, and genetic damage more frequently, more quickly, and more severely in African-Americans and Hispanics than in whites, especially when these pesticides are inhaled.
Krieger NK, Wolff MS, Hiatt RA, Rivera M, Vogelman J, Orentreich N. (1994). Breast cancer and serum organochlorines: A prospective study among white, black, and Asian women. J Natl Cancer Inst 86:589-99.
Rios R, Poje GV, Detels R. (1993). Susceptibility to environmental pollutants among minorities. Toxicol And Health 9(5):797-820.
But it's not just chronically lethal pesticide residues which cigarette smokers encounter as hazards. Some of the additives in cigarettes are deliberately designed in cigarette company laboratories to addict smokers to that particular brand, while others are designed to regulate the rate at which the smoker lights up and puffs. Another class of additives is designed to raise the burning temperature of the cigarette, thereby turning more of the "tar" into gas, which lowers the "T&N" rating of the brand since tar particles and not tar gasses are used to obtain the rating.
It's probably coincidental that by imposing tar and nicotine limitations on cigarettes the government gave the industry its greatest marketing tool ever and actually increased the danger of the resulting cigarettes to smokers, but that's what happened, just as it is probably coincidental that the cigarette companies cite the Surgeon General's warning on the pack as "fair notice" to cigarette smokers about the hazards of using the product.
If you are told often enough that you are badly injuring yourself by your behavior, and you don't see it happening, then it's natural to listen to a friendly demon who just happens to be sitting right there on your shoulder whispering in your inner ear
"Of course, you're too special for anything bad to happen to you. Not to you, my dear - oh no. All those terrible stories are about other people, the unlucky ones, the ones who aren't young, and beautiful, and special, like you."
The cigarette companies, ever pleased to tap into or create human weaknesses, evidently concluded long ago that the way to deal with those not fully convinced by that soothing voice in their inner ear, placed there with consummate craft by psychic surgeons unlike any the world has ever seen before, was to put the issue of danger right out front and then trivialize it using known psychological processes.
To accomplish this the industry needed a line, a hook, and just by coincidence the FTC, which has no authority to regulate the industry with regard to content, imposed what looked like regulations on the output of the cigarette -the smokestream. The "Low Tar & Nicotine Derby" has been the greatest aid to market segmentation that any industry has ever seen. It has allowed the cigarette companies to create brands which appeal to specific kinds of health fears and concerns, and to create other brands for those macho folks who want a real man's smoke - no filter, heavy on the T&N.
The clear intent of low tar and nicotine cigarette brand advertising is to convey that they are less risky because they are lower in harmful stuff. In the beginning of the Derby that may have been true - cigarette manufacturers in the early 1970's when this all began first responded by using various chemical treatments to puff-up the tobacco in their cigarettes, meaning less tobacco per cigarette and therefore less T&N per cigarette.
However things quickly got trickier because cigarettes began being made not from tobacco, but from synthetic ingredients which could impregnated with precisely measured amounts of nicotine. The problem was that pesky tar, and the solution was to raise the burning temperature of the cigarette so that more of the stuff that makes tar at low temperatures is turned to gas and therefore isn't trapped as particles by government tests. The tar chemicals still wind up in the smoke, and in the lungs, because while cigarette filters are pretty good at trapping particulate matter they are terrible at stopping gasses, and the hazards presented by this gasified tar are different, and possibly worse such as vinyl chloride and hydrogen cyanide, than those created by the original tar. Of course, that's not what's important or relevant. The point is, turn the tar into gas, which isn't measured and - voila! - you've got a low tar cigarette brand.
One of the major classes of gas-phase cigarette smoke are the hydrazine analogues, produced as the result of pesticide combustion. As early as 1977 cancer researchers were writing about this class of chemicals in serious tones, such as
" Studies on the tumorigenic activities of hydrazine analogues are aimed at revealing the environmental significance of this class of chemicals in cancer causation. To date (1977) 37 such compounds have been shown to produce tumors of intestines, blood vessels, lungs, liver, kidneys, breast, and central and peripheral nerve tissues of laboratory animals. Interestingly enough, nearly all of the hydrazines studied were tumor inducers. Since the human population is environmentally exposed to approximately half of the hydrazines studied thus far that induce tumors in experimental animals, it seems justifiable to warn against further use of these hazardous compounds"
B. Toth et al., Cancer Research, Vol. 37, October, 1977 page 3499
These researchers weren't writing about the hydrazines liberated by pesticide combustion in cigarette smoke - they were writing about exposure to hydrazine compounds in the environment - anywhere, anyhow. And smokers have been exposed to an additional 20 years of hydrazines, among many other classes of extremely dangerous chemicals, since this was written.
By the way, speaking of nasty things that come across in the gas, those filters are tricky little high technology items too. For example, if you examine many filters you'll see a pattern of holes everywhere but at the tip of the filter. This means that when the laboratory testing machines grip the filter to obtain smoke for a T&N rating, they grip it right at the tip and so the smoke that goes into the machine is modified by air being drawn through all those holes further down the filter. However, when a person smokes that filter cigarette, especially a person with larger lips and fingers, a great many of those tiny holes get covered up, and the actual smokestream that smoker gets is hardly low T&N. That's how the cigarette companies can produce a brand which they can claim is Low Nicotine and still deliver the buzz to the smoker - because the smoker covers up the airholes in the filter that dilute the laboratory smokestream and gets a much more concentrated smoke.
Cigarette technology, by the way, offers a rich trail of evidence once you understand what you're looking at. For example the development of the longer, slimmer cigarette has little to do with fashion and a lot to do with the fact that you can burn the smoking materials at a higher temperature in a longer, thinner tube and turn more of the tar into gas, while controlling the nicotine as just described, resulting in a Low Tar & Nicotine, (high gas and buzz) cigarettes for all those health conscious women who smoke.
There are three core facts to keep in mind as you browse the evidence here:
Please contribute comments, information, research or suggestions, which will enhance the effectiveness of this site to bdrake@ktc.com
For many years the debate over whether or not cigarettes cause cancer has raged, and been unresolved. Meanwhile, smokers continue to drop like files, and increasingly it's becoming clear that their children are also being permanently disabled and placed at risk for cancer, neurological disease, and genetic mutations.
The point of this section is that the cigarette industry and the scientific community have known for at least three human generations, since the 1970s, that these chemical contaminants are in commercial cigarettes and that they are carcinogenic, at a minimum, under conditions of chronic exposure.
On the one hand, scientists, health officials, and concerned lay persons have insisted that the connection between cigarette smoking and disease is obvious. The U.S. Surgeon General has placed a definitive warning on all cigarette packages. The various national health organizations have concluded that cigarette smoking is indeed dangerous and have expended many millions in research into the mechanisms behind cancer, heart disease, neurological damage, etc. Millions of people have stopped smoking cigarettes, and millions more have switched to "Low Tar & Nicotine" brands in the mistaken notion that these were less dangerous.
On the other hand, the tobacco companies have been able to point out - quite correctly - that none of this research actually proves that cigarettes cause such things as cancer. There are a number of reasons why this is the case. Primarily it is because scientists have been unable to demonstrate an unequivocal cause-and-effect linkage between cigarette smoking and any of the so-called smoking-related diseases. For example, while many people who smoke cigarettes contract lung cancer, so do non-smokers. So the tobacco companies are able to claim that it can't be just cigarettes causing lung cancer, and that it may not be cigarettes at all. Innocent until proven guilty, in science and in law.
Another major problem lies in the semantic consciousness of the regulators and scientists. For example, throughout the last 20 years of tables published in books and reports by U.S. Surgeon General detailing the presence of cancer-causing substances in cigarette smoke, table are rarely labeled to distinguish between tobacco and cigarettes. Typical titles in USSG publications have included:
"Carcinogenic Agents in the Gas Phase of Tobacco Smoke"and
"Carcinogenic Agents in Tobacco Smoke Condensate"
Such scientists either don't know, or ignore the easily-established fact that there is an enormous difference between what is found in tobacco smoke and what is found in cigarette smoke. If you raise a tobacco plant by natural methods, cure it using only natural materials, chop it, roll it and smoke it, you're going to get one sort of chemical mix in the smoke. Granted that tobacco is a heavy feeding plant, that it does take up all sorts of heavy metal micronutrients, and even some radioactive elements.
But if you take that same tobacco plant, gas the seed beds, spray continuously for hundreds of different species of bugs, spray for fungus, use a fertilizer with specialized herbicides incorporated into the formula, control secondary leaf growth with suckering agents, poison the snails and slugs, attack the molds, gas the leaves to assist in curing, then gas stored tobacco frequently, and then add a wide range of chemicals during processing and manufacturing, you'll get not only the tobacco components in cigarettes made from this plant, but you'll also get dozens and even hundreds of chemicals and their combustion by-products which have nothing at all to do with nature or the plant.
So when our most prominent scientists and institutions are confused about the basic components of what they're studying, is it any wonder that they haven't yet been able to establish the link between cancer and cigarettes, even though half a million people are dying every year from an obvious cause that can't yet be scientifically demonstrated? Maybe they haven't been looking in the right places.
As reported in this 1977 study, by the late 1970s many scientists, including those working for the cigarette industry, knew that cigarettes and other so-called tobacco products were contaminated with cancer-causing pesticides in concentrations sufficient to explain cancer in cigarette smokers. As an example, the following table from the study displays what was already known about many of the common tobacco pesticides and the concentrations in which they were known to be carcinogenic under conditions of chronic exposure.
| Common Name | Manufacturer | Carcinogenicity | Carcinogenic Concentration |
| Dieldrin | Shell | + | 2.5 PPM |
| Endosulfan | FMC | -(a) | ? |
| Endrin | Shell/Velsicol | + | 3.2 PPM |
| BHC | Diamond/Hooker | + | 0.50 PPM |
| DDT | multiple | + | 10.0 PPM |
| Lindane | Diamond/Hooker | + | 236.0 PPM |
| TDE | Allied/Rohm & Haas | + | ? |
| Aldrin | Shell | + | 3.0 PPM (c) |
| Chlordane | Velsicol | + | 25.0 PPM |
| Heptachlor | Velsicol | + | 10.0 PPM |
| Toxaphene | multiple | + | ? |
(a) Endosulfan is listed as non-carcinogenic on the basis of a single study in one species only (mice). Innes et al, (1969). (site editor's note: This classification has since been reversed and endosulfan is now recognized as a human carcinogen.)
(b) "Based on the best available data," National Cancer Institute (1979).
(c) "Causes tumor development in mice at the lowest doses tested. Indeed, it has been impossible to establish a safe level for this compound." Hart et al (1976).
The authors of this study point out that
"It must be appreciated that the carcinogenicity data on the OCP's, as for the great majority of other pesticides, are based on ingestion rather than inhalation as the route of exposure, which is likely to be of relevance to humans. Also the carcinogenicity of "inert ingredients" in pesticide formulations, particularly benzene, asbestos and petroleum oils, must be recognized."
It remains to compare the levels at which these compounds are considered carcinogenic, and the concentrations reported on commercial cigarettes by competent, scientific literature. Note that some of the studies are as much as 25 years old, and do not represent the true situation in 1996, which may very well be much worse for a number of reasons discussed following the data. These studies were all available to the tobacco industry by the time of the 1977 Origins of Human Cancerstudy cited above; indeed, many of these studies were industry-funded.
| Pesticide | Concentration Found | Tobacco Product | Reference |
| Dieldrin | 0.04 PPM | cigarettes | Dorough & Bryant 76 |
| Endosulfan | 0.28 PPM | cigarettes | Dorough & Bryant 76 |
| Endosulfan | 23.00 PPM | cured leaf | Reif 77 |
| Endrin | 0.06 PPM | cigars | Dorough-Bryant 78 |
| Endrin | 0.72 PPM | cigarettes | Sheets 1976 |
| BHC | 1.11 ug/pack | cigarettes | Kamata 1977 |
| BHC | 0.51 PPM | cigarettes | Ceschini 1980* |
| DDT | 278.00 ug | cigars | Kamata 1977 |
| DDT | 7.20 PPM | cigarettes | Richter 1977 |
| DDT | 6.90 PPM | cigarettes | Dorough & Bryant 77 |
| Lindane | 0.33 PPM | cigarettes | Richter 1978 |
| TDE | 12.70 PPM | cigarettes | Sheets 1966 |
| Aldrin | 0.01 PPM | cigarettes | Ceschini 1980* |
| Toxaphene | 2.33 PPM | cigarettes | Domanski 1977 |
| Toxaphene | 0.38 PPM | cigarettes | Dorough-Bryant 77 |
| Toxaphene | 4.30 PPM | cured leaf | U.S.D.A. 1977 |
*16 U.S. brands
It's important to keep in mind a couple of points whenever you're examining cigarette research data.
Some pesticides survive the boiling-off process better than others. Some are simply incinerated, leaving no trace of the original compound and creating nothing harmful as a result of combustion. Others burn completely, but create daughter compounds that range from unknown to hazardous in their health effects. Others burn incompletely, so that the smoker receives a volatilized dose of the original pesticide plus the by-products of combustion of the pesticide, range from unknown to hazardous in their health effects.
The key point here is that out of the combustion and volatilization of the multiple pesticide residues which can be shown to be common contaminants of the US cigarette supply create a wide range of hazards many of which need no further proof of their severity as an immediate preventable threat to public health. If the pesticide contamination were removed from the US supply, and if the industrial process contaminants like benzene and hexane were also removed, then there would be a material reduction in the level of public health threat posed by cigarettes and other so-called tobacco products, and the rest of the hidden aspects of this problem could be brought to light and worked on by scientists, legislators, and citizens.
To briefly make the point that it is not just the chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides which are present in hazardous concentrations in cured tobacco and commercial tobacco products, we present the following representative summary table derived from the 1970s pesticide residue literature. Reader contributions of updated research would be very much appreciated.
| Pesticide & product | Reported Concentration | Reference |
| Carbofuran cured leaf | 191 PPM | Hawk et al (1976) |
| Disulfoton cured leaf (a) (b) | 60 PPM | Witlekind (1976) |
| Methomyl cigar wrapper | 8.36 PPM | Tappen et al (1973) |
| Parathion cured leaf | 42.8 PPM | Wittekind (1976) |
| Maleic Hydrazide cigarette | 150 PPM | U.S.D.A (1980) |
| Maleic Hydrazide cigarette | 47 PPM | Sheets et al (1972) |
| Methyl Bromide cigarette | 73-137 PPM | Ahmad et al (1979) |
(a) "Residues of disulfoton also include demetons sulfoxide and sulfone." UN/WHO 1977.
(b) "In cell culture, protein synthesis is reversably inhibited at 10 PPM and disulfoton is cytotoxic at 60 PPM." UN/WHO 1977.
Where has the Surgeon General been? In some ways, this chief protector of the public health has been trying to tell us about the problem all along -- it's just that the tobacco industry is so powerfully sheltered that the Surgeon General hasn't really had the information available. Also, let's not underestimate the reach and power of the tobacco industry. It certainly seems from the available literature that the Surgeon General has been pretty much duped along with everyone else in the official health establishment on the subject of pesticides in commercial tobacco. Take for example the following paragraph from the 1981 Surgeon General's report on "The Changing Cigarette."
Influence of Raw Product Modification on the Pharmacology of Cigarette Smoke.
"The composition of smoke is determined by the physical and chemical properties of leaf tobacco. Modification of the raw product therefore changes the pharmacology of cigarette smoke. The diversity of available tobacco germplasm along with known genetic techniques permits reduction of hazards in cigarettes through plant breeding and selection. Cultural and curing practices are constantly changing in response to market demands and the needs of farmers. Pesticides currently registered for use on tobacco have been tested as contributors to the carcinogenic activity of cigarette smoke condensates. When used as directed, these materials caused no significant change in biological activity. However, the pesticides used in tobacco farming change from time to time in response to the occurrence of new plant pests; for example, the recent spread of blue mold in tobacco-growing regions has led to the use of a new pesticide. It is not known whether the use of such materials may result in changes in the hazards of cigarette smoke."
This paragraph gives the reader the unfortunate impression that pesticide residues have been looked into and found not harmful on cigarettes when properly applied in the field. However, the two studies cited, by G.B. Gori and T.C. Tso are extremely limited in scope, and examine only what happens to certain legal pesticides when they are applied at carefully monitored rates onto experimental tobacco plants which are made into laboratory cigarettes and tested by limited methods for a restricted range of effects. These tests do not show the Surgeon General, or the public, anything about the realities of enormous amounts of illegal pesticides on cigarettes, or about even the residues of legal pesticides illegally applied in Third World countries at excessive rates.
The Surgeon General, elsewhere in this same report, admits to a large degree of powerlessness with respect to monitoring anything that the tobacco companies put in their products. The issue is additives, which get a great deal of attention throughout the report, but the observations apply equally well to pesticides.
"We must continue to monitor the changing cigarette to ensure that when new cigarette products appear they do not bring with them new hazards to health. Throughout this report the need to know about substances added to cigarettes is stated repeatedly. At present, there is no mechanism by which government or the scientific community can require disclosure of these additives, which must obviously be a first step in assessing their health effects. This needs to be corrected by voluntary action or, if necessary, by legislation."
Secretary of Health Education and Welfare Patricia Harris, in a letter to Tip O'Neill, House Speaker, on 1/12/79
Another closely related concern about lower "tar" and nicotine cigarettes is the use of flavorings and other chemical additives. In order to enhance consumer acceptability, flavoring substances are added to cigarettes; it may be that the lower the "tar" yield, the more flavoring additives are used. It is impossible to make an assessment of the risks of these additives, as cigarette manufacturers are not required to reveal what additives they use. No agency of the federal government currently exercises oversight or regulatory authority in the manufacture of cigarette products. Further, no agency is empowered to require public or confidential disclosure of the additives actually in use by the cigarette manufacturers.
Since the Surgeon General hasn't been able to "officially" identify and test for carcinogenicity in the flavor and processing additives, much less the agricultural chemicals and pesticides in cigarettes, it is little wonder that so much of the research coming from government health sources has a confused and frustrated tone.
"It cannot be determined whether the unidentified mutagens in cigarette smoke are an important cause of lung cancer in humans; however, added exposure to any tumor initiators probably carries an incremental risk of cancer." (p. 38, Changing Cigarette, US Surgeon General, 1981.)
"Several carcinogens from cigarette smoke should be studied for synergistic, additive or antagonistic effects on carcinogenesis because tobacco constituents are inhaled or swallowed as a mixture, not individually." (p. 101, Changing Cigarette, US Surgeon General, 1981.)
"Of particular concern is the potential teratogenic (fetus damaging) effect of additives and their combustion products." (p. 12, Changing Cigarette, US Surgeon General, 1981.)
"In recent years, a number of flavoring additives or cellulose-based tobacco substitutes may have been included in manufactured cigarettes. The nature and amounts of such additives as actually used are not known, nor is it known what influence these additives may have on the chemical composition or subsequent biological activity of cigarette smoke." (p. 17, Changing Cigarette, US Surgeon General, 1981.)
"More data is needed on cigarette flavor additives and their combustion products. Flavoring agents and additives should be studied by the tobacco companies for carcinogenicity and toxicity before their commercial use is permitted, and the results of such studies should be made available." (p. 26, Changing Cigarette, US Surgeon General, 1981.)
Almost all of the significant U.S. work on carcinogens in tobacco smoke has involved a handful of researchers. By consensus, Dr. Deitrich Hoffman is the most prominent American expert on the cancer-causing role of compounds found in cigarette smoke. Dr.Hoffman's American Health Foundation is the source of almost all of the U.S. Surgeon General's data on carcinogenic compounds in the smoke of U.S. cigarettes, and this distinguished scientist, along with a skilled team of researchers, has uncovered much of what little is known about pesticides in cigarettes, and cancer.
That's why it is particularly important, as we begin to look at the evidence accumulated on the role of pesticides in cigarette-related cancer, that we pay attention to this simple statement from the American Health Foundation in a personal letter to the author, 5/13/82. "There appear to be few - if any - studies on chronic sublethal exposure of mammals to the tobacco pesticides ... "
In a 1972 study, Chemical Decomposition & Tumorigenicity of Tobacco Smoke, funded by both the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society, Dr. Hoffman along with others found both pesticides and their pyrolytic products carcinogenic. In their conclusion the researchers stated
"One specific characteristic of tobacco smoke is its tumor-promoting activity. Until now, only limited information has been available as tothe chemical nature of the tumor promoters. Although volatile phenols and long chain fatty acids are known tumor promoters when applied in high concentrations, the majority of the promoters in the "Tar" remain unknown and need to be identified."
Earlier in the report, in one of the rare literature references to the carcinogenic potential of pesticides in cigarettes, Dr. Hoffman notes:
"We found that trans-4, 4-dicholorstilbene, a major pyrolysis product of DDT and the alkylating carbazoles are active as tumor accelerators." "Tumor accelerators are defined as agents which by themselves are inactive as carcinogens, tumor initiators, or tumor promoters which, however, accelerate the activity of carcinogens and/or tumor initiators."
This 1979 study marked a major statement of position for Dr. Hoffman on the matter of "tar" coming from cigarettes.
"The carcinogenicity of the particular matter of tobacco smoke is primarily explained by three types of tumorigenic agents: tumor initiators, tumor accelerators, and tumor promoters. The majority of the tumor initiators are polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, and, as recently found, a number of alkylated polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons. A significant inhibition of the pyrosynthesis of these carcinogenic polycyclics leads to a significant reduction of the tumorigenicity of tobacco smoke condensate as does the experimental quantitative reduction of these hydrocarbons in the "tar."
From this point on, Dr. Hoffman's research has focused increasingly on the issue of carcinogenic agents in the innocently-named "tar", as well as in the gasses of cigarette smoke. In the process, he has increasingly become interested in the role of pesticides as sources of carcinogenic agents in cigarettes, although this has almost been incidental to the main focus of these studies. For instance, in a 1978 paper on Hydrazines, Dr. Hoffman reports one of the first indications that Maleic Hydrazide, a suckering agent used in enormous quantities in the U.S. and almost universally worldwide, was probably contributing potent carcinogens to cigarette smoke.
"The apparent reluctance of researchers to study hydrazines as environmental carcinogens may reflect the difficulty of locating and analyzing them. One obvious place to look is agricultural crops treated with Maleic Hydrazide. We therefore investigated tobacco (which is treated extensively with MH-30)."
"Our studies with MH-30 also demonstrated the presence in tobacco of N-nitrosodiethanolamine ... and ethyl carbamate. These two additional carcinogens may contribute to tobacco carcinogenesis."
"It is apparent from the number and variety of hydrazines shown to be animal carcinogens that all hydrazines should be suspect pending animal studies. It appears that most hydrazines are tumorogenic in the lungs and blood vessels of laboratory animals."
Dr. Hoffman's research led to themid-1980s de-registration of Nitrosodiethanolamine as a carrier solution for the application of Maleic Hydrazide. In the process of his investigations into this chemical, called NDELA for short, he discovered that it is not only smokers who are put at hazard through pesticides and herbicides or tobacco.
"Snuff, which is increasingly used as a smoke substitute by young people and which is a carcinogen in the oral cavity of its long-term users, was shown to contain between 3.2 and 6.8 PPM of NDELA. Thus, this N-nitrosamine adds to the carcinogenic potential of the tobacco-specific N-nitrosamines in snuff (which range from 5.5 to 106 PPM, according to an article in preparation by Dr. Hoffman in May '82)."
Dr. Hoffman's work on pesticides, while the most prominent in the country, only touches on the health issues involved in pesticide residues on cigarettes, a fact which the skilled researcher himself admits.
"It is apparent that relatively little is known of the fate of pesticides or herbicides that are applied to agricultural products, while they are in contact with the latter, and when they are ingested (or inhaled) by man. Certainly more effort is needed in this area of study that is important to public health." (D. Hoffman, J. Anal. Tox. 11/78).
While there have been only the few studies by Dr. Hoffman and others into the direct role of pesticides as sources of chemical carcinogens in cigarette smoke, there is a great deal of evidence that since the pesticides are indisputably present, often in some quantities, then they must be a major source of the cancerous results of cigarette smoking.
Shortly after Dr. Hoffman's research began to close the research gap, other researchers traced certain types of cancer directly to cigarettes, but weren't able to describe the process in minute detail in humans.( This has happened for the first time in 1996 with the work in California tracing benzo-a-pyrene in cigarette smoke to the exact spot on a human chromosome where lung cancer arises.) Thus the tobacco companies have been able to buy three decades of profits merely by pointing out insistently, continually, and deceitfully that no direct connection has been made between cancer and smoking.
In the December 1982 New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Emmanuel Farber stated that "about one third of the cancer in North American and Europe is related to the use of cigarettes and other tobacco products." Dr. Farber went on to say that:
"the conceptual advances concerning ... initiation and promotion are well-known. However, their mechanistic bases are-only now unfolding ... The basic validity of these concepts for cancer development in human beings has been established in a few instances, and as such is reassuring both for the physician and the scientist. For instance ... a limited exposure for only a few months to a known chemical hazard, such as vinyl chloride, may lead years later to the appearance of angiosarcoma of the liver."
Vinyl chloride is a major pyrolytic byproduct present in cigarette smoke, and is one of the organ-specific carcinogens described in the research of Dr. Dietrich Hoffman.
The tobacco industry's shoulder-shrugging explanation of the presence of these known carcinogens in cigarette smoke has always been that the tobacco plant is one of nature's wonders, that it produces thousands of different compounds when its leaves are burned, that it takes up immense amounts of soil minerals, metals and heavy elements, and that, generally, there's just no accounting for how that damned plant eats up all that stuff that the scientists are forever finding in the smoke of the leaves. Gee whiz, fellers, can't you just take our word fur it -- all that stuff in tobacco jes' there natchurlly.
Many pesticides inhaled in cigarettes are able to cross the human placental barrier. Some of these are potent known carcinogens such as Endrin and Parathion. So what happens when they enter the body of the unborn child? Dr. Farber tells us:
"The presence of many proliferating cells is probably one basis for the susceptibility of the fetus and neonate [newborn baby] to many chemical carcinogens and would account for the peak in cancer incidence in the first decade of life. (Author's note: either that, or the first decade of life that we're seeing now is a preview of things to come for all ages.) The human fetus, unlike the rodent fetus, acquires the capability of activation of some carcinogens early in development and thus may be at greater risk than some laboratory animals for cancer development with chemicals."
This paper is full of chilling possibilities, once you understand the role of cigarettes-pesticides in the widespread health problems of people all over the world. For example, Dr. Farber engages in a discussion of how the human body, specifically the liver, adapts to the stream of carcinogenic chemicals which enter the body by several pathways:
" The liver is by far the most active and most versatile organ in the metabolism of procarcinogens and of xenobiotic agents generally. It and other organs have an ability to detoxify potential carcinogens as well as activate them, and the ultimate fate of a chemical depends largely on the balance between activation and inactivation -- a balance that is easily modulated in major ways by drugs and other chemicals, age, nutrition and hormones, as well as genetics.
For example, the carcinogenicity of several aromatic amines for the liver can be completely prevented by simultaneous exposure to phenobarbital or 3-methylcholanthrene -- agents that induce many liver enzymes. This phenomenon of resistance of the induced liver to some carcinogens may be of great practical importance to human beings. Virtually all people in the Western world have levels of several xenobiotic agents, such as chlorophenothane, dieldrin, aldrin, polychlorinated biphenyls, and dioxins, in their adipose and other tissues. These agents as a group are effective enzyme inducers in the liver. In addition, many drugs induce microsomal or other enzymes in the liver or other tissues. Are these inducers making tissues more or less susceptible to the acute toxic or carcinogenic effects of other environmental agents?"
Aromatic amines are produced with abandon by burning pesticides, and there is no dispute as to their carcinogenicity. Yet, Dr. Farber points out, their cancerous potential can be completely neutralized by phenobarbital. The phenobarbital causes the liver to produce enzymes which attack and render the aromatic amines powerless to cause cancer - sometimes.
Can this in any way explain the association between cigarette smoking and the drinking of alcohol, an intense barbiturate drug? And might one not conclude, given that-we all have pesticides in our fat, muscle, brain, organ and nerve tissue, that our liver must be kept in a constant state of arousal, just to deal with this constant or increasing pesticide contamination of our bodies? Are alcohol and pills a screaming necessity to millions of us because of pesticides in the most intimate tissues of our being?
Dr. Farber makes many other interesting points in his article. He points out that
"The absolute activities of the various enzymes and especially their relative balance may have key roles in determining which organ will be a target for a particular carcinogen. An interesting example of modulation at this level is the liver-kidney axis with dimethylnitrosamine. This potent carcinogen normally induces liver cancer when taken through the gastrointestinal tract. However, if the animal is placed on a low-protein diet, the hepatic activation and metabolism fall off. This pattern allows more of the carcinogen to be available for action on the kidney and changes the dominant cancer pattern from the liver to the kidney."
Dimethylnitrosamine is present in cigarette smoke as a combinant pesticide combustion byproduct. So what Dr. Farber's research shows that if you prefer cancer of the liver, keep smoking but don't go on a diet. If you want kidney cancer instead, go on a diet and you might even up your smoking a little, like most folks do. To be fair, that is not Dr. Farber's conclusion. Instead, he concluded
" Clearly, the pathologic consequences of exposure to any potentially toxic xenobiotic are related not only to the pathways available for its metabolism but also to the physiologic state at the time of exposure. Thus, the presence of a known mutagen or carcinogen in the environment is by no means synonymous with a mutagenic or carcinogenic response by the exposed person."
Let's switch focus from the larger issues to the very smallest, at least in proportion -- the role of DNA breaks in initiating cancer. This is the process by which almost all long-established pesticides which have been shown to be cancer-causing have been thought to operate. Dr. Farber writes,
"In view of the essentially irreversible nature of initiation with chemicals and the apparent focal nature of the initiation process, major emphasis at the molecular level is given to DNA as the target for initiation. However, the evidence is largely circumstantial."
Dr. Farber then goes into some detail on the most hopeful route toward a cure for chemically-caused cancers, DNA repair. In particular there is hope that cellular enzymes do much more than just serve human cells like little programmed slaves; that they can spring to life and perform intricate repairs of cell DNA when properly stimulated to do so.
Then comes the hook, as far as cigarette smokers are concerned.
" Although a majority of chemical carcinogens fall well within the current paradigm in which initiating effects are related to some form of DNA damage, there are known carcinogens that appear to be exceptions. A growing list of hypolipidemic agents and several pesticides, herbicides and other xenobiotics have not been shown to generate mutagenicity or other DNA damaging effects. Is this merely a reflection of deficiencies in our technology, or are there new pathways to cancer that do not involve DNA damage of exogenous origin as essential early steps in the process?"
New pathways for cancer? Caused by a new generation of pesticides and herbicides which operate in new ways? Many of these new chemicals being used on tobacco in the Third World, long before they are even registered for use in the United States? So, before scientists have even begun to successfully cancers caused by the old-style pesticides and herbicides, and before the commercial tobacco industry is brought under even the smallest degree of rational, humanistic control, we are now seeing "new pathways to cancer" opening up as a result of untested, unexamined, unregulated pesticides and herbicides used on Third World tobacco and other crops.
There is an enormous irony to chemically induced cancer, and that is, as Dr. Farber points out at the conclusion of his paper, that:
"Some of the most effective chemotherapeutic agents for cancer are carcinogenic. For treatment of cancer in patients above 50 or 60 years old, the importance of the risk of carcinogenicity is clearly minimal, given the long latent period for cancer development. However, in children and young adults, the development of second cancers years after the effective treatment of the primary tumor is now becoming a recognizable problem."
So when environmental chemicals, particularly those in cigarettes, give a person cancer, just about all that the physicians can do at present is to treat that cancer with chemicals which in themselves are likely to cause another type of cancer, and about all that the doctors can hope that the person is old enough that he or she will die before the second cancer comes on.
Early in the inquiries which led me into this complex subject it became clear that there was a cigarette industry line in place to deal with inquisitive folks. "There is no problem. Once, in the 1950's, there might have been, but now there is no need for concern."
I talked with scientists who ought to have known better who insisted that a teeny bit of pesticides in your smoke wasn't going to hurt you. I talked with bureaucrats who clearly knew that tobacco was drenched with dangerous chemicals but, because of tobacco's unregulated status and potent political clout to assure that it stayed that way - no comment, pure stonewall. " I guess they're pretty much self-regulating on that one" a senior USDA official once told me, when I pushed him publicly to explain what if anything the department was doing to determine the health risks to smokers of known insecticide residues in US tobacco crops. I spoke with a statewide doctors group who ridiculed the idea that it might be the pesticides and not the tobacco by saying "What's a little more poison in the poison?" And I talked with a few people who agreed that, if what I said was true, there was a terrible thing happening. But anyone connected with the industry had, unremarkably, the same line - "There is no problem. Please stop being a pest. Case closed."
Actually the cigarette industry line is a little more complex than that - better reasoned, more compelling. Enough so to have stopped those few inquiries aimed in their direction dead in their tracks for decades.
It's important to realize that the cigarette industry, the US government, the captive university research community, much of the scientific and medical establishment, and much of the press have been thoroughly immersed in a complex line of reasoning which has caused and enabled them to ignore, deliberately or not, the clear implications of what selling, or allowing the sale, or facilitating the sale of heavily contaminated products to unsuspecting public for decades has done- which is to move almost universal public opinion to the point where the attitude when a smoker dies is - "Too bad, but what did they expect?"
It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows the cigarette industry that they have a very well reasoned line in place for just about every issue that may arise concerning pesticide residues in tobacco products. I've seen one variation or another of this line used in those few occasions when the issue has been raised in a public forum, and include it here along with some commentary in the hope that it will be useful to others making fresh inquiries based on the information presented at this site.
"Pesticide residues on cigarettes? Well, of course there are bound to be a few traces of agrichemicals left on the tobacco. But we've never heard of any research that says these pesticides are harmful in such tiny amounts."
" In fact, we've run tests of our own for years, and we've found that levels of important pesticides have been consistently going down for years on all US tobacco. We've also run our own tests and found that almost none of the pesticides get through the smoking process. Also, the US government itself has established residue levels in foods and just about everything else, and US grown tobacco is carefully inspected by USDA."
"You know, if our farmers weren't able to use some of these pesticides, under careful government control, then insects would do millions of dollars in damage to valuable crops, and many small farmers could be wiped out. "
"And of course, these chemicals are also used on just about every other agricultural commodity, without any cause for alarm as long as residues are kept to a minimum. Just about everything you eat has some kind of agricultural chemical in it, so why get excited about a few traces of chemicals in your cigarette - especially if you smoke a filtered, low nicotine brand?"
With some of these pesticides, chronic exposure by inhalation to a trace is all it takes. Others are present in far more than trace amounts when you take their known human health impact into account - for example, traces of dieldrin are cumulative and stored in fatty tissue in a supertoxic form. So over time, and at the rate of 50,000 exposures a year for pack-a-day smokers, traces of dieldrin become pools of supertoxic dieldrin waiting to be released by any kind of weight loss - like the weight loss associated with AIDS or with cancer, for example. What a great time to have your body fat releasing a mix of supertoxic, supercarcinogenic, super immunity busting chemicals which have been stored away by your body in the best way it knew how.
That's because so little published research has been done in this field. However, there are very strong indications that in unpublished research by the chemical companies and the cigarette industry scientists, done primarily as they went through the EPA registration process, the question of the health hazards presented by these residues were investigated. In the published literature there have been very few scientists working on establishing causal connections between any of the common pesticide contaminants of cigarettes, and the studies which have been done have focused ironically on one of the more innocuous tobacco chemicals - maleic hydrazide. Well, innocuous may not be the right word since, when burned, maleic hydrazide does produce copious amounts of a known high-impact carcinogen benzo-a-pyrene, but in comparison to the combustion by-products of some of the other common tobacco pesticide contaminants, MH is not high on the immediate threat list.
Guthrie, F.E. and Sheets, T.J. Pesticide Residues On Tobacco: A Continuing Problem, (in) Tobacco, 170 (13): pp17-21, March 1970. One in a very long string of publications by these scientists who, working for the tobacco industry, have tracked pesticides for decades. They note that the magnitude of insecticide residues on tobacco leaf compared to other plants exposed to equal amounts of chemicals is caused by physiological properties of the tobacco leaf itself; specifically, it's high surface-to-volume ratio. They also note what they call the "time-honored practice of preventative insecticide treatments rather than adherence to economic thresholds" and that complain that tobacco company technologists won't recognize the problem as a major one.
If the danger to the smoker isn't sufficient to grab the attention of health authorities, you'd think that an understanding of the relationship between the pesticide residues on cigarettes and children's brain cancer would do the trick, wouldn't you. A high Centers for Disease Control official at a 1993 Waste Management conference http://atsdr1.atsdr.cdc.gov:8080/cx1d.html explained the results of exposure to Lindane and certain other common household pesticides - which also happen to be common contaminants of cigarettes, with the following observations:
Fortunately, childhood cancer is extremely rare and is often curable according to the definition of 5 year survival. Studies of the link between childhood cancer and potential environmental exposures have been done under a variety of circumstances, some involving paternal occupational exposure, some maternal occupational or other exposure, and some direct neonatal household exposures (Ahlbom 1990, DL Davis et al. l990b, O'Leary et al. 1991).
Preliminary studies by the Missouri State Health Department showed that children exposed to certain home and garden pesticides had a rate of brain cancer that was up to 6 times higher than that of children without those exposures (JR Davis et al. 1993). This is an exceptionally strong association, which is seldom seen in environmental epidemiology.
Another Missouri State Health Department survey (JR Davis et al. 1992) found that a wide variety of pesticides were being used in households, and people were often unaware that they were using pesticides. For example, many consumers did not know that pet shampoo and flea collars contain active, toxic, pesticide ingredients, despite warning labels that advise that children should not be in contact with them. Surprisingly, 80% of pregnant women polled in this study also reported using some sort of pesticide while pregnant.
In a case control study comparing reported exposures in children who had brain cancer and other cancers and using friends without disease as controls, these same authors reported several troubling results associated with residential uses of pesticides and home and garden insecticides. They divided children's lives into 3 time periods: the time of pregnancy, birth to 6 months of age, and 7 months to diagnosis.
They found some suggestion of an increased risk of brain cancer when exposures took place from birth to 6 months and from 7 months to diagnosis. If the family used a termite pesticide, the risk of brain cancer was 2.9 times greater, or almost 3 times greater compared with other cancer controls. For the specific termite pesticide, chlordane, the risk of brain cancer was 1.5 times greater, but this included a confidence interval of from 0.5 to 4.9.
This study also showed that several specific residential uses increased the risk of childhood brain cancer. Fog bombs for flea or roach control conveyed a 2 fold higher risk of childhood brain cancer, when used during pregnancy. Surprisingly, when brain cancer cases were compared with other cancer controls, children whose families had used flea bombs had a 6 fold higher rate. Flea collars for dogs and cats are another widely used household pesticide. The data suggest that, for exposure to the flea collar and the treated pet combined, from birth to 6 months and from 7 months to diagnosis, the relative risk for childhood brain cancer may also be quite high.
Ought to make a Mom think twice before lighting up.
In 1980 the Swiss State Tobacco Monopoly conducted tests on the efficacy of filters in trapping pesticide residues and found that an average of 17% of the pesticides on the tobacco got through