Cigarette Smoking and Polonium

New Delhi, Dec. 19 (PTI): You don't have to be a Russian spy to be poisoned by polonium. It is right there in the cigarette you puff.

...........

But she says, most people don't know that cigarette smoke also contains carbon monoxide, TSN and radioactive substance like polonium and lead. "One puff of cigarette contains 4800 chemicals (I call them poison) out of which 69 are carcinogens. And the smoke which a passive smoke inhales contains no less than 400 of these chemicals."

Burning makes these chemicals more dangerous and carcinogenic and thus the smoke is more harmful, she says. Lighted cigarettes produce polonium and insoluble lead in the mainstream. Smokers inhale them deep into their lungs. The airways branch into narrower and narrower passageways. The particles of smoke bearing radioactive residues get deposited at these branches. These hotspots deliver high radiation doses. Most lung cancers are formed in these regions, Dr Parthasarathy, also a nuclear radiation expert, says.


In 1982, hundreds of smokers stopped the habit after reading an article "Radioactivity in Cigarette Smoke" in the New England Journal of Medicine. T H Winters and J R DiFranza of the University of Massachussets Medical Centre wrote that cigarette contains radioactivity in the form of Polonium-210 and lead-210, notes Dr Parthasarathy. The report claimed that a person smoking one-and-a half pack of cigarettes per day receives a dose to certain regions of the lung equal to 300 X-Ray films of chest per year.

He quotes Dr Ravenholt, a former director of World Health Surveys at the US Centers for Disease Control, that Americans receive more radiation from tobacco smoke than from any other source. American smokers smoke on an average 11,000 cigarettes annually


http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200612191131.htm

I've been smoking for 47 years! WAIT! Let me duck into a dark room and check!




Nope. No glow yet.

. . .and i'd sure like to see the peer review of this paper, then that means it's true of everything.

The heat from combustion is not sufficient, by several orders of magnitude to MAKE something radioactive. So, it has to be in there anyway. While i certainly understand the point that inhaling into the lungs is far worse than walking next to a plant with polonium in it, the logical extension of this conclusion is that everything can eventually give one cancer. Which may be true anyway, but is hardly a scientific conclusion.

I'm suspicious of the methodology and conclusions of this study.
The Professor

From the same cite. Looks like it's a matter of how the tobacco was fertilised.

Sorry, but phosphate mines are shallow, not deep tunnel, mines. So, if uranium is in the fertilizer, then we're all exposed all the time. The details of this study are pretty tenuous.
The Professor

However, internal is internal. No? We eat a lot of broccoli too. I'm worried for all of us! NOT!
The Professor

...

Here may be an explanation: Dr. Jerome Marmorstein found radioactive polonium in the lungs of smokers and in tobacco grown since 1950. Polonium levels tripled in American tobacco between 1938 and 1960. (Aren't they supposed to tell us those things?)

This radioactive polonium, plus some lead and radium found in cigarettes and the lungs is directly related to the fertilizer used in tobacco farm soil. The Tennessee Valley authority helped fund apatite rock grinding factories for the tobacco farmers. That's where the polonium came from. There is also cadmium in tobacco. They are bad.

...

http://www.chiroweb.com/archives/10/24/24.html

I've always wondered about the soil and water around those enrichment sites.
The Professor

High phosphorus fertilizers are very common in many crops and in home gardens. Tomatoes are cultivated in a similar fashion as tobacco and are in the same family (solanacean family). Would their risk be the same?

That stuff frightens me

Radiation in Tobacco

While not an obvious source of radiation exposure, cigarette smokers inhale radioactive material that, over time, contribute large radiation dose to the lungs. Worse, smokers are not the only ones affected by the radiation in cigarettes. Second-hand can be just as harmful to nearby non-smokers.

Naturally-occurring radioactive minerals accumulate on the sticky surfaces of tobacco leaves as the plant grows, and these minerals remain on the leaves throughout the manufacturing process. Additionally, the use of the phosphate fertilizer Apatite – which contains radium, lead-210, and polonium-210 – also increases the amount of radiation in tobacco plants.

The radium that accumulates on the tobacco leaves predominantly emits alpha and gamma radiation. The lead-210 and polonium-210 particles lodge in the smoker’s lungs, where they accumulate for decades (lead-210 has a half-life of 22.3 years). The tar from tobacco builds up on the bronchioles and traps even more of these particles. Over time, these particles can damage the lungs and lead to lung cancer.

more -

http://www.epa.gov/radtown/tobacco.htm


US Nuclear Regulatory Commission:

Polonium was discovered by Marie Curie in 1898; she later named it for her homeland of Poland. It exists in nature in small quantities and is found in tobacco. For industrial purposes, it is produced in milligram amounts in nuclear reactors. Only about 100 grams (a little more than 3 ounces) is believed to be produced worldwide each year, making polonium quite rare. Commercially licensed distributors import a very small amount of polonium-210 into the US each year.

Potential Hazards

Polonium-210 emits alpha radiation, which cannot penetrate paper or skin. Therefore, external exposure does not pose a health hazard. It also decays quickly, with a half-life (the time it takes to lose half its radioactivity) of 138 days. That means polonium-210 effectively loses its radioactivity in about two-and-a-half years.

However, if swallowed or inhaled in sufficient quantities and absorbed into the system, polonium-210 can be extremely toxic – many times more toxic than cyanide. If polonium-210 is ingested in its most common form, most of it will likely pass through the system without being absorbed. Once absorbed, however, the alpha radiation can rapidly destroy major organs, DNA and the immune system. Because of this hazard, pure polonium-210 must be handled very carefully. The Health Physics Society estimates that as little as 3 millicuries of polonium-210, equivalent in size to a few grains of salt, could be fatal to a person weighing 70 kilograms (154 pounds).

more -

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/polonium.html


The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Secondhand Smoke Is Toxic and Poisonous

snip-

There are more than 50 cancer-causing chemicals in secondhand smoke that fall into different chemical classes, including:

* Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) (such as Benzopyrene)
* N-Nitrosamines (such as tobacco-specific nitrosamines)
* Aromatic amines (such as 4-aminobiphenyl)
* Aldehydes (such as formaldehyde)
* Miscellaneous organic chemicals (such as benzene and vinyl chloride) and
* Inorganic compounds (such as those containing metals like arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, lead, nickel and radioactive polonium-210).

Eleven compounds in tobacco smoke (2-naphthylamine, 4-aminobiphenyl, benzene, vinyl chloride, ethylene oxide, arsenic, beryllium, nickel compounds, chromium, cadmium and polonium-210) have been identified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as Group 1 (known human carcinogen) carcinogens.
#

more -

http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/factsheets/factsheet9.html


So yes, polonium 210 is found in tobacco and it is radioactive, but to be harmful to humans, it needs to be absorbed into the body. Inhalation is one of the most effective ways to do this.

I see nothing in any of those cites to establish that it has been there at any time after the big bang at levels any higher than in all plant life. I'm a scientist too. I'm not impressed by half-work and non-peer reviewed appraisals about the sky falling.

One of my biggest concerns as someone tried in science and analysis: If all these things were as catastrophic as reported, and for which scientists are rewarded, why has the life expectancy for americans gone up every decade since 1820, (war deaths excluded)? Give me all the pseudoscience cites you want. Until there is one that explains that inverse correlation, i will be sanguine about the conclusions.
The Professor

Radon gas in houses forms electrostaticly charged radioactive particles as it decays. The relatively massive cigarette smoke particles electrostaticly attract the radioactive particles to them which would otherwise stick to surfaces like walls etc. Polonium is one of them. Once they are in your lungs a cascade of decay occurs that forms dozens of additional radioactive particles. This is why houses with high radon concentrations have a huge lung cancer risk if any of the residents are smokers.


http://enhs.umn.edu/hazards/hazardssite/radon/radonriskassessment.html

Don't smoke but if you do, test for Radon!

. . .i'd like to see who peer reviewed this. Radioactivity is absorbed? Really? The absorption of electromagentism? Hmmmm.


And, this guy is a FORMER researcher. That doesn't say to me that the USDA says it. Just a guy who used to work there.
The Professor

Um, I think the author is talking about the absorption of the radioactive polonium.

http://rpd.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/54/2/139

Although we may drink two liters of liquid each day, we breathe in an estimated 15,000 liters of air per day. This is why Radon is so dangerous at such small concentrations.

Sorry, but we've had enough threads about smoking for today.

best,
wakemeupwhenitsover
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