Smoking is... good?

[LQB]

Reminded of this by a comment on the above youtube video posted by LadyRodgers, I was wondering how much attention the issue of radioactive phosphate fertilizers used on tobacco has been given.

I did a search on the forum and came up with this article with only one reply:

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,11376.msg80473.html

A google search for "tobacco radioactive fertilizer" yielded this as the first result:

_http://www.acsa.net/HealthAlert/radioactive_tobacco.html
which seems pretty solid aside from some references to Israel that I'm not sure what to make of.

I can remember seeing a reference to this in a small article way back in a late 1990's edition of The Emperor Wears No Clothes (_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_Wears_No_Clothes ) and I've wondered about it all this time. Maybe it seems too over the top and in your face. Much like water fluoridation, it's use for nefarious purposes is just too horrible for most people to contemplate. Even if it were being done without knowledge of negative health effects, it's still a lot for people to take in. (if you add in a jokey reference in a funny movie like Dr. Strangelove, the deal is sealed)

But if true, this is about as close to a literal smoking gun re: tobacco/health effects/conspiracy as you can get. Has the SoTT team given research time to the issue of radioactive phosphate fertilizers used on tobacco and the connections to ill health effects?

As far as I know, all mined phosphate is "radioactive" due to small amounts of uranium. The amounts are very small. In the early 70's, my brother and I worked summers at the phosphate plants in Florida (for spending money while at college). At the time there was a small pilot plant (at one of these plants) designed to extract uranium from the phosphoric acid (derived from adding sulfuric acid to phosphate dust). It's a painful/costly process that only pays when Ur prices are high since the concentration of Ur is so low. So all phosphate fertilizers will contain some of this Ur.

 

[meta-agnostic]

As far as I know, all mined phosphate is "radioactive" due to small amounts of uranium. The amounts are very small. In the early 70's, my brother and I worked summers at the phosphate plants in Florida (for spending money while at college). At the time there was a small pilot plant (at one of these plants) designed to extract uranium from the phosphoric acid (derived from adding sulfuric acid to phosphate dust). It's a painful/costly process that only pays when Ur prices are high since the concentration of Ur is so low. So all phosphate fertilizers will contain some of this Ur.

This makes sense, which is why I think the article in the other thread blames it on the "archons" as opposed to any identifiable human conspirators.

As I understand the argument, the radioactive particles are more easily lodged in the lungs than in the digestive system and have greater effects. It makes it that much more imperative to not use these fertilizers with crops you smoke as opposed to crops you eat. Combined with all of the other doctored data out there swaying perception in favor of tobacco causing health problems, this could be just one more piece to the puzzle but it could be a big one. It would certainly explain why tobacco only started to really get a bad name in the 20th century. And it would certainly be interesting to see how cancer rates, etc. compared between people who had only smoked organically fertilized tobacco and people smoking the standard stuff of today, but I doubt such studies are available.

 

[LQB]

As far as I know, all mined phosphate is "radioactive" due to small amounts of uranium. The amounts are very small. In the early 70's, my brother and I worked summers at the phosphate plants in Florida (for spending money while at college). At the time there was a small pilot plant (at one of these plants) designed to extract uranium from the phosphoric acid (derived from adding sulfuric acid to phosphate dust). It's a painful/costly process that only pays when Ur prices are high since the concentration of Ur is so low. So all phosphate fertilizers will contain some of this Ur.

This makes sense, which is why I think the article in the other thread blames it on the "archons" as opposed to any identifiable human conspirators.

As I understand the argument, the radioactive particles are more easily lodged in the lungs than in the digestive system and have greater effects. It makes it that much more imperative to not use these fertilizers with crops you smoke as opposed to crops you eat. Combined with all of the other doctored data out there swaying perception in favor of tobacco causing health problems, this could be just one more piece to the puzzle but it could be a big one. It would certainly explain why tobacco only started to really get a bad name in the 20th century. And it would certainly be interesting to see how cancer rates, etc. compared between people who had only smoked organically fertilized tobacco and people smoking the standard stuff of today, but I doubt such studies are available.

Without more study/research, it's hard to say if the radioactive signal from mined phosphate is in the "noise" of other background elements in the soil (including "natural phosphate") and variability with locale, especially when you consider worldwide nuclear testing (not to mention Fukushima). And then the plants capability to metabolize these elements/compounds probably also varies widely across species and even soil composition.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Also keep in mind that the claims of smoking causing lung cancer are, like so many others, pretty much out and out lies. For over four decades they've tried unsuccessfully to induce lung cancer in mammals by forced cigarette smoke into their lungs. And as far as I'm aware, all these experiments that failed to induce lung cancer, used commercial cigarettes. Also, the nature of how the lab animals had the lungs exposed to cigarette smoke and the duration and quantities was not at all comparable to how people smoke -- much more intensive, and still no lung cancer.

Finally, there's evidence that smoking actually protects against lung cancer and other radiation caused lung damage. There are several articles on SOTT you can search for with cited sources to get more data.

 

[Mr. Premise]

There is the issue of radioactive Polonium in tobacco products that I've read about here and there. That will certainly cause cancer.

From the New York Times in 2006, granted by someone who gave expert testimony against the tobacco companies (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/opinion/01proctor.html). This person also points to the phosphate fertilizers as a possible source.

The industry has been aware at least since the 1960s that cigarettes contain significant levels of polonium. Exactly how it gets into tobacco is not entirely understood, but uranium “daughter products” naturally present in soils seem to be selectively absorbed by the tobacco plant, where they decay into radioactive polonium. High-phosphate fertilizers may worsen the problem, since uranium tends to associate with phosphates. In 1975, Philip Morris scientists wondered whether the secret to tobacco growers’ longevity in the Caucasus might be that farmers there avoided phosphate fertilizers.

How much polonium is in tobacco? In 1968, the American Tobacco Company began a secret research effort to find out. Using precision analytic techniques, the researchers found that smokers inhale an average of about .04 picocuries of polonium 210 per cigarette. The company also found, no doubt to its dismay, that the filters being considered to help trap the isotope were not terribly effective. (Disclosure: I’ve served as a witness in litigation against the tobacco industry.)

A fraction of a trillionth of a curie (a unit of radiation named for polonium’s discoverers, Marie and Pierre Curie) may not sound like much, but remember that we’re talking about a powerful radionuclide disgorging alpha particles — the most dangerous kind when it comes to lung cancer — at a much higher rate even than the plutonium used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Polonium 210 has a half life of about 138 days, making it thousands of times more radioactive than the nuclear fuels used in early atomic bombs.

 

[Mr. Premise]

Found this is Wikipedia on Polonium:

Tobacco

The presence of polonium in tobacco smoke has been known since the early 1960s. Some of the world's biggest tobacco firms researched ways to remove the substance—to no avail—over a 40-year period but never published the results.

Radioactive polonium-210 contained in phosphate fertilizers is absorbed by the roots of plants (such as tobacco) and stored in its tissues.Tobacco plants fertilized by rock phosphates contain polonium-210, which emits alpha radiation estimated to cause about 11,700 lung cancer deaths annually worldwide.]

Food

Polonium is also found in the food chain, especially in seafood.

 

[meta-agnostic]

There is something I don't get about this whole issue. And I am not trying to call anyone out on anything as this is certainly a confounding subject.

On the one hand there is the assertion that all (or maybe most) of the propaganda claiming tobacco use causes health problems is based on lies. This propaganda is generally assumed to refer to mass-market tobacco products, although the fascist totalitarians would have you assume it means any product made from any tobacco plant whatsoever.

On the other hand, advice has been given many times here not to smoke mass-marketed cigarettes, as they are poison.

So, which is it? It seems clear that you would be better off smoking tobacco you grew in your own backyard, fertilized by compost (provided you don't live in an area with toxic soil), but are mainstream cigarettes dangerous or not, and if so, why? Do we know? I think there is a quote somewhere in this thread from a C's session where they claim whether or not tobacco causes cancer depends on the mindset of the individual. Taking into account quantum mechanics and radioactivity and whatnot, I can see how this might work. But it doesn't really clear things up as far as what is safe(r) to smoke and how much of an inconvenience it is worth to obtain the purest tobacco you can find.

I really do want to get to the truth of this matter, but my own selfish motivation is that I will likely have to "come out of the closet" fairly soon to more people as an adult-onset tobacco smoker, and it would be helpful to be able to sound at least somewhat coherent when inevitably questioned about it.

 

[Mr. Premise]

There is something I don't get about this whole issue. And I am not trying to call anyone out on anything as this is certainly a confounding subject.

On the one hand there is the assertion that all (or maybe most) of the propaganda claiming tobacco use causes health problems is based on lies. This propaganda is generally assumed to refer to mass-market tobacco products, although the fascist totalitarians would have you assume it means any product made from any tobacco plant whatsoever.

On the other hand, advice has been given many times here not to smoke mass-marketed cigarettes, as they are poison.

So, which is it? It seems clear that you would be better off smoking tobacco you grew in your own backyard, fertilized by compost (provided you don't live in an area with toxic soil), but are mainstream cigarettes dangerous or not, and if so, why? Do we know? I think there is a quote somewhere in this thread from a C's session where they claim whether or not tobacco causes cancer depends on the mindset of the individual. Taking into account quantum mechanics and radioactivity and whatnot, I can see how this might work. But it doesn't really clear things up as far as what is safe(r) to smoke and how much of an inconvenience it is worth to obtain the purest tobacco you can find.

I really do want to get to the truth of this matter, but my own selfish motivation is that I will likely have to "come out of the closet" fairly soon to more people as an adult-onset tobacco smoker, and it would be helpful to be able to sound at least somewhat coherent when inevitably questioned about it.

Have you read this entire thread? Much of this is discussed. Yes, commercial, industrial cigarettes are very harmful and will cause cancer. There are three main problems:

1. The pesticides used in them, many of which are banned in the US and Europe but the industrial tobacco is mostly grown now in developing countries. The following list only includes those approved in the United States for use with tobacco: acephate, carbaryl, carbofuran, chloropicrin, chlorphyrifos, chlomazone, Diazino dichlorpropene, disulfoton endosulfan, ethoprop, fenamiphos, ferbam, flumetralin, fonofos, isopropalin, malathion, maleic hydrazide, metalaxyl, methomyl, napropamide, oxamyl, parathion, pebulate, pendimethalin, and trichlorfon. Who knows what you would get from third world grown tobacco.

2. Other addiditves, some used to increase the speed of nicotine hitting the brain, making the products way more addictive. In other words these products are engineered to maximize addictiveness.

3. The Fire Safe Cigarette (FSC) chemicals in the paper of manufactured cigarettes. Laws were passed in all 50 states mandating that all cigarettes have this, with no testing of its safety. Anecdotal evidence from smokers say they are awful. But no testing was done, because they figured 1. Cigarettes are inherently unsafe, 2. The FDA has no jurisdiction, and 3. Whatever health risks are outweighed by fewer people burning their houses down.

By a weird twist, the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) which is responsible for food and drug safety has no authority over tobacco products. So no testing has been done on relative safety of different tobacco products and their additives.

 

[ocean59]

Take a look at these lists, it should clear up any misconceptions that these mass-marketed sticks are any more tobacco than Doritos are corn on the cob (I know, I know, bad example). Combine that list with all the other discussion here (especially fertilizers and FSC papers), and the answer is obvious IMO.

_http://www.philipmorrisusa.com/en/cms/Products/Cigarettes/Ingredients/Non_Tobacco_Ingredients/default.aspx?src=top_nav
_http://www.philipmorrisusa.com/en/cms/Products/Cigarettes/Ingredients/Tobacco_Flavor_Ingredients/default.aspx?src=top_nav

I remember going to this website about 10 years ago, and counting the number of ingredients listed - it was over 800. Now, the list is down to only a couple hundred. I seriously doubt they just stopped using the rest, but more likely for whatever reason they don't need to give as complete a list anymore.

Edit: Here is another interesting example from RJ Reynolds. If you click to see the ingredients for Camel non-filters, you will see at a minimum the following compounds are still added:

Water
Glycerol
Brown Sugar
Propylene Glycol
High Fructose Corn Syrup
Sucrose
Cellulose Fiber
Cocoa
Licorice
Diammonium Phosphate
Ammonium Hydroxide
Natural & Artificial Flavors

 

[meta-agnostic]

I've read the vast majority of the thread. I may have skimmed a few pages that were mainly about brand advice, etc.

I guess my main point is, if mass-market cigarettes really are this terrible, then is the evidence for tobacco being harmful really doctored? I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if some of it were doctored, but it seems more like the problem is the scientists conducting these studies don't do a very good job of separating out the variables. Again, not surprising.

I just think it is important to try to have a coherent stance on this issue, particularly when it invites strangers to come up to you and insult you, claim you are poisoning them, etc. Since the whole thing likely extends to some metaphysical level where most of the human actors don't really understand what they're doing, as water fluoridation probably does, I know it's difficult.

 

[Al Today]

Yep, smoking a commercial cigarette is smoking garbage. I cannot answer some questions I have. About all those non-tobacco additives... There must be costs involved with obtaining and mixing those ingredients. Just seems "they" go through lot's of trouble to produce cigarettes that contain more rubbish than tobacco? And for profit, those costs must be lower than if pure tobacco was used without all that extra cost and work of mixing. I would Think? Either "they" save money, increase profit by using all those non-tobacco ingredients, or... "someone" is really trying to poison the people.?.?.?
I would love to see a cost justification of those non-tobacco ingredients...

 

[anart]

I've read the vast majority of the thread. I may have skimmed a few pages that were mainly about brand advice, etc.

I guess my main point is, if mass-market cigarettes really are this terrible, then is the evidence for tobacco being harmful really doctored? I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if some of it were doctored, but it seems more like the problem is the scientists conducting these studies don't do a very good job of separating out the variables. Again, not surprising.

I just think it is important to try to have a coherent stance on this issue, particularly when it invites strangers to come up to you and insult you, claim you are poisoning them, etc. Since the whole thing likely extends to some metaphysical level where most of the human actors don't really understand what they're doing, as water fluoridation probably does, I know it's difficult.

It's very easy to have a coherent stance - it's the stance the forum has taken. Pure tobacco - preferably organic - is beneficial to most people's health. Mass market tobacco barely qualifies as tobacco, and calling it tobacco it's rather like calling Twinkies food.

 

[Gonzo]

As for why the adulterants are added, I would think many are for covering up cheap tobacco, add flavour, to burn faster (so you go through faster and but more), to burn evenly, and to create an addiction. I imagine this was necessitated when they industry moved away from high quality whole leaf tobacco and sufficient aging time in exchange for low quality remnants (the main leaf part of low quality tobacco would go to cheap cigars and pipe tobacco) that needed to be ground up into dust, mixed with a chemical soup and poured on forming fabrics to make tobacco sheets that get shredded and called cigarette tobacco.

The cheaper the process, the more adjusting required by adding chemicals.

The tobacco industry has more money than the average private, government or academic research unit and can spend all sorts of money on product development, including discovering novel ways of hooking their customers and slowly killing them off to replace them with a new batch of users and can do so without much oversight, due to lack of regulation and the cost of analysis and research.

Gonzo

 

[SeekinTruth]

I've read the vast majority of the thread. I may have skimmed a few pages that were mainly about brand advice, etc.

I guess my main point is, if mass-market cigarettes really are this terrible, then is the evidence for tobacco being harmful really doctored? I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if some of it were doctored, but it seems more like the problem is the scientists conducting these studies don't do a very good job of separating out the variables. Again, not surprising.

I just think it is important to try to have a coherent stance on this issue, particularly when it invites strangers to come up to you and insult you, claim you are poisoning them, etc. Since the whole thing likely extends to some metaphysical level where most of the human actors don't really understand what they're doing, as water fluoridation probably does, I know it's difficult.

It's very easy to have a coherent stance - it's the stance the forum has taken. Pure tobacco - preferably organic - is beneficial to most people's health. Mass market tobacco barely qualifies as tobacco, and calling it tobacco it's rather like calling Twinkies food.

Yup, that about sums it up. Did you read the posts by Rabelais about the loophole of how they get the banned fertilizer "tobacco" from so called third world countries into the U.S. cigarettes? Besides the fertilizers used, and the hundreds and hundreds of toxic chemical additives, this is basically waste product left over from tobacco that is made into sheet, similar to making (more like recycled, I guess) paper from pulp. They actually have no tobacco leaf in them (it's stems, etc). It's quite a stretch to call this tobacco, isn't it?

And besides, the recent law in the U.S. with the "fire safe" paper -- which is basically carpet glue added -- you can see the picture. So as time went on, the commercial cigarettes became more and more toxic and really shouldn't even qualify as a tobacco product, sort of like much of the mass market food. But I don't live in the U.S. anymore and the only cigarettes that I avoid like the plague now are mass market imported brands. I smoke roll-your-own sometimes, and non additive pipe tobacco through a pipe, as well as cigarettes. The local tobacco, as everything else grown, is grown in traditional ways as it's been don for many centuries. There's no "intensive farming" here. But yeah, in the U.S. mass market cigarettes are not safe, just as the mass market food is anything but safe.

That said, though, I still think that a whole lot of other environmentally -- radiation and industrial pollution, etc. -- caused health issues are blamed on cigarettes. In other words, even these non-tobacco, toxic sticks passing as cigarettes are probably not as dangerous as the PTB propaganda claims.

 

[whitecoast]

You know, I was interested in trying tobacco, but all the stores I went to only carried generic agrochemical-infused cigarettes. I actually ended up settling with using nicotine patches for my day-to-day dosage

A subjective part of me, of course, does not want to have to be seen smoking by my relatives. British Columbia is one of the most vehemently anti-smoking regions in the world, from what I've heard. My mother used to smoke often when I was a child, and I did end up getting terribly sick due to problems in the indoor "air quality," as a medical specialist told us. And almost every single adult relative I've had while growing up did memorize these little pet anti-smoking lectures, saying what we'd be forced to do if we were ever "caught" smoking (because it is obviously a cloak-and-dagger operation we're talking about here). This stains my memory of tobacco somewhat, but I have tried a non-organic cigarillo before and ended up liking it.

One thing I can't really get over is the throat and lung irritation I've felt. I know it was non-organic that I tried, but I still think that inhaling heated smoke does result in some lung damage; no matter what substances you're delivering to your bloodstream. That's why I just have been sticking with nicotine patches. Even if the delivery method is slower, I like just having to put it on in the morning and not worry about it for the rest of the day. Plus I don't need to go outside for a smoke during work breaks and I can just read a book or something. ;)

That being said, have any of you considered using a vaporizer on tobacco, to make the nicotine optimally healthy or pure for inhalation? That's one thing I would consider using, but I couldn't justify spending upwards of 150$ on something just for myself like that. And I can't carry it around in my pocket either, of course.