1: The Black Lung Myth
A common idea, amongst smokers and non-smokers alike, is that smoking causes tar deposits in the lungs. It is believed these tar deposits turn the lungs black and cause cancer. Cancer Research UK says of tar that it is “a sticky black residue made up of thousands of chemicals that stays in the smoker’s lungs and causes cancer.” However, it does not take much logical thought and science to realise this not only is not true, but cannot be true. The idea that smoking causes black lungs is no more than a myth, and the evidence for this is plentiful.
Possibly the first thing people say on the subject is that they have seen pictures of a smoker’s blackened lung and a non-smoker’s pink lung. While it may be true that the blackened lung was that of a smoker and the pink lung that of a non-smoker, that is not the end of the story; the pictures are invariably of a smoker’s cancerous lung and a healthy non-smoker’s lung, and we now know that cancerous organs often turn black. A report in MNDaily on a cancer exhibition called Cancer and the Human Body explained that, as part of the event, a black, oversized lung was shown next to a normal healthy lung to show the effects of lung cancer. What this serves to show is that lung cancer will usually turn the organ black.
A few years ago channel four ran a series of programmes showing autopsies conducted live by Dr Von Hagens, and one episode was on cancer. The woman having the autopsy performed was ravaged with cancer and it was very obvious which organs were cancerous by their colour: they were all black. Of course, not all cancerous organs are black, and indeed some are dyed for the purpose of education or scare-mongering.
Going back to the pictures of the two lungs, the fact that the smoker’s lung is always cancerous and the non-smoker’s lung always healthy means they are incomparable. If a smoker’s lung was compared with a non-smoker’s lung and neither had cancer then they would both look identical, and the same is true for a smoker’s and non-smoker’s lung with cancer. Furthermore, the photographs are invariably of the outside of the lung and not the inside. Cigarette smoke never reaches the outside of the lung and subsequently would have no chance to turn it black.
The original run of such photographs was pulled in 1969 as it was discovered that the lungs portrayed as smokers were, in fact, those of coal miners whose lungs had turned black from years of exposure to the soot and carbon. If smoking really was responsible for blackening the lungs, no such trickery would have been necessary.
In 1964 the U.S. Tobacco Research Council conducted a study of 3,000 lungs taken at autopsy for atypical metaplasia. The researchers found no difference between smokers and non-smokers. Also in 1964, in Germany, a study consisting of 26,000 autopsy records found that there was no significant relationship between smoking and lung cancer.
Today, even those conducting autopsies admit that looking at lungs alone is not a way to tell if the deceased smoked. Wray Kephart is a man who used to work in hospitals performing autopsies, usually on the behalf of insurance companies. Writing online, Kephart claims to have performed around 1560 autopsies and he says it is normally impossible to tell whether the deceased was a smoker or not from autopsy. This was confirmed by Dr Jan Zeldenrust, a Dutch pathologist for the Government of Holland from 1951-1984. In a television interview in the 1980s he stated:
"I could never see on a pair of lungs if they belonged to a smoker or non-smoker. I can see clearly the difference between sick and healthy lungs. The only black lungs I’ve seen are from peat-workers and coal miners, never from smokers."
Further confirmation came recently when I was able to speak to a Canadian Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) named Adam Highberg. The discussion was mainly about oral cancers but he also spoke briefly about smokers’ lungs, saying:
"I have seen diseased lungs before, and sometimes in the case of smokers, but not always. These are normally found in people who live and work in unhealthy environments for extended periods of time. You know, the guy who works in a fibreglass plant but never wears a mask. Because of this, it would be almost impossible to say that black lungs are solely that of smoking; I believe that it is far more likely an environment issue."
The lungs are always clear unless the deceased had lung cancer or heavy exposure to pollution, such as that from living in a large city or an occupation like coal mining. Living in a city, or any area with a significant amount of pollution, is one factor that many people are unaware of or choose to ignore when it comes to the state of the lungs. Anyone who lives in, or visits, such a place will be aware of the black that they either cough up or produce when blowing their nose, and it is this same produce that can be seen in X-rays on the lungs. The produce in question is elemental carbon, which will indeed stick to the lungs and living in a built-up area for a long time can turn the inside of the lungs somewhat black.
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Another common misconception is that cigarettes contain tar – they do not; at least, not the type of tar that is used on roads as many people now believe. As stated at the start of this chapter, the general belief is the tar from cigarettes deposits in the lungs and causes cancer. This simply is not the case. If, indeed, cigarettes caused tar to be deposited in the lungs of smokers then each and every one would die of asphyxiation long before they ever got the chance to get cancer. Researchers would also be able to simply put tar in the lungs of animals and wait for the cancer to develop, yet this has never been the case. Tar is a very thick substance and it can kill people very easily.
In the days when Christianity was illegal, one of the methods of killing the martyrs was by having their bodies dipped in tar. The tar blocked up their pores and prevented their skin being able to breathe, thus killing them. Clearly, there is no way someone could live with much tar in their lungs. Furthermore, if there was tar present in cigarettes it would not only be in the lungs, but also in the mouth and throat as well as on teeth and fingers, and smokers would cough up chunks of black tar. This has never happened. Let us take a look at the facts:
In America, full-strength cigarettes contain 20 mg of ‘tar’. The lung capacity of an average adult human is about six litres, or 6,000 cubic centimetres. At room temperature, one cubic centimetre (one ml) of water weighs about one gram. However, tar is an oily substance that floats on water, so one millilitre weighs less than a gram. The exact density of tar depends on its composition, but tar is usually a mixture of many different oily chemicals and at its densest one gram occupies about 1.25 ml of volume. At 20 mg (0.025 ml) of ‘tar’ per cigarette, it would take at least 50 cigarettes, or two and a half packs, to yield one gram of ‘tar’.
This means that, after one and a quarter packs, or 25 cigarettes, of full-strength cigarettes, a smoker would have about 0.5 ml of ‘tar’ in their lungs. As already mentioned, the lungs have a capacity of 6,000ml of air, so 12,000 packs would be needed to completely fill them with ‘tar’. Smoking one pack per day would accomplish that in about 33 years. This means that anyone who started smoking at age fifteen would have nothing but a thick slurry of tar oozing out of their nose and mouth by age 48. There would be no air left in his or her lungs at all, just ‘tar’. This, however, is not the end of the story. Obviously, if the lungs were completely filled with tar, then suffocation and death would be imminent. The lungs do not have to be completely filled to result in suffocation; about a cup (500 ml) is sufficient, and that is about 1,000 packs of full strength cigarettes. This could be smoked in just under three years at a pack a day. If the popular myths about cigarette ‘tar’ were true then every pack-a-day smoker would be dead, from suffocation, before the end of three years. This is not the case; everyone either knows or has seen an elderly smoker, or knows people who have been smoking for over three years.
Even before a smoker reaches the stage of 500 ml of tar being in their lungs to kill them, they would certainly have very minimal lung capacity and would be constantly out of breath – to the point where any exercise, including walking, would be dangerous as their lungs could not provide the body with the oxygen it needs. Imagine a sponge: when dipped in water it absorbs the liquid. Imagine that same sponge dipped in tar and then in water, the tar coating would stop any water being absorbed. The same is true of the lungs with oxygen: tar would prevent oxygen passing through into the bloodstream, so death would occur instantly. All smokers would suffocate to death.
Some people attempt to counter this by saying that the body rids itself of toxins and waste. Anyone with any knowledge of tar would realise that the body cannot simply eject it – tar in the body stays there. The body can, and does, eject particles through phlegm and cilia, such as the aforementioned black produce apparent after blowing one’s nose after a day in a heavily polluted area. However, actual solid tar, which is what we are led to believe accumulates in smokers lungs, is not simply ejected. If it really were so easy to get rid of, it would not have killed so many martyrs whom had it smeared on their skin to cause death by suffocation.
So, we are left with the question of ‘what is the tar in cigarettes?’ According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, tar is “total particulate matter…less nicotine and water”. In other words, cigarette tar is the solid remains once the water and nicotine products have gone (through smoking, or, at least, the tobacco product being lit). It is also said the tar is “the complex of particulate matter in the smoke that is left behind on a filter after subtracting all the nicotine and moisture.” Interestingly, neither of these definitions supports the anti-smoking mantra that the ‘tar’ is the same as road tar and that it collects in the lungs.
It is important to remember that in the 1950s and 1960s the word ‘tar’, when used in relation to cigarettes, was used with quotations marks around it, as in this book. This was to signify that it was just a term used, and that it was not actual tar like we see on the roads. Nowadays the quotation marks have been dropped and we are told it is the same substance; when I was in school our teacher told us they add road tar to cigarettes to make them burn easier, a statement that is clearly false. The notion that smoking blackens the lungs can be traced back to 1948 to Ernst Wynder M.D ...
Wynder, then a first-year medical student in St Louis, was witness to an autopsy of a man who had died of lung cancer and he noted the lungs were blackened. The sight roused his curiosity and he looked into the background of the patient, discovering that there was no obvious exposure to air pollution but that the deceased had smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for thirty years. He linked the two and then spent his career trying to prove smoking causes cancer. However, as we are now aware, through advancements in science and our understanding of cancer, it was actually the disease itself that blackened the lungs and not the smoking. It is clear, then, that the premise smoking blackens lungs – and, indeed, causes cancer – was flawed and inaccurate from the start.
Thus, it is obvious that smoking cannot and does not leave tar in the lungs, nor does it turn the lungs black. Black lungs are the result of one or both of two things: spending years in an area with high pollution, such as a city or working as a coal miner; or cancer. In pictures comparing a non-smoker’s lung with a smoker’s lung, they are a non-cancerous lung and a cancerous lung, and no comparisons or assertions on lifestyle can be drawn.
