4000 chemicals in tobacco smoke. And?

Factual Questions
1

It is frequently claimed that tobacco smoke contains 4000 chemicals. The problem is, they haven’t given me any frame of reference. Is that more or less chemicals than one might find in an apple? Some questions, if someone has the power to answer them:

  1. How many chemicals are in “air”? (I know that this will vary from city to city and season to season and whatnot, but is there a ballpark that will help to understand the “4000” number?)

  2. It is frequently asserted that among the harmful chemicals, there are anywhere between 20 and 50 known carcinogens and anywhere between 150 and 400 “poisons”. What does this really mean? Are any of the chemicals that are in tobacco smoke in food we eat or the air we breathe? Some of the chemicals mentioned: ammonia, arsenic, benzene, cadmium, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide.

  3. The fact that smoking is harmful is supported by the claims mentioned above. Is there any basis in fact or simply a standard marketing ploy of telling someone that something is very important but not really supporting it (way too many people believe anything they are told by an “authority”). For example, is the level of cadmium in cigarette smoke significantly larger than one might encounter elsewhere in their environment? If the cadmium in cigarette smoke is 1 ppm but the air around us contains 4 ppm, it is hardly relevant.

Please note that this is not a question of whether or not smoking is harmful or causes cancer. That is really quite irrelevent to the topic at hand. What I’m hoping to find out is whether the “facts” offered by anti-smoking campaigns are really significant, or merely marketing.

2

Well, if you want to find out the implications of someone taking an action, ask an insurance company, which has enormous financial incentive to find out what doing that thing will do for your mortality.

Smokers get pay about 40% more for life insurance.

3

Smokers have to pay about 40% more.

4

Just FTR, along with the chemicals you mentioned, I’ve also heard uranium. I always loved the idea of them putting uranium (238, according to the poster) into cigarettes - just for that extra kick.

5

Again, Cardinal, it’s not the implications of smoking that are being questioned here. If the harm caused by smoking is the result of one single “chemical”, then the “4,000” number is nothing more than marketing. It sounds scarier that “one really bad chemical”. “4000 chemicals” would also not really be a relevant fact if your Corn Flakes contain 4,500 chemicals.

6

Morkfromork, I wish you the best of luck with this thread, I really do. I’d like an answer too. Great, great question by the way.

7

Thanks. It was a toss-up between this and “How can I get Cameron Diaz to love me and ride me like the stud-pony I am?”

8

I’ll have a crack at this… I do have a masters degree in chemistry after all (for all the good it’s done me).

Firstly, the word “chemical” is meaningless. Everything that makes up the physical world, everything you eat, drink, inhale and excrete is a chemical, or a mixture of chemicals. (OK, some things are elements, but you can regard those as chemicals too.)

So yes, it’s equally meaningless to say that cigarette smoke contains 4,000 chemicals. I haven’t been able to dig up any figures, but I can guarantee that during the course of the day you consume many many more than 4,000 individual substances.

However, many of the chemicals in cigarette smoke are very bad news. Benzene is one. Hydrogen cyanide is another. Benzo[a]pyrene is a particularly potent carcinogen. As for whether the levels of these nasties are significantly higher in cigarette smoke than in the ambient environment – yes they are.

Let’s look at some figures:



Chemical           Quantity in smoke   Safe Limit

acetaldehyde       3,200 ppm           200.0 ppm 
acrolein           150 ppm             0.5 ppm 
ammonia            300 ppm             150.0 ppm 
carbon monoxide    42,000 ppm          100.0 ppm 
formaldehyde       30 ppm              5.0 ppm 
hydrogen cyanide   1,600 ppm           10.0 ppm 
hydrogen sulfide   40 ppm              20.0 ppm 
methyl chloride    1,200 ppm           100.0 ppm 
nitrogen dioxide   250 ppm             5.0 ppm

These figures are from here (about half way down). The “safe limit” is the the maximum threshold, which is considered safe, or at least these were the figures in 1964. The site notes that many of these safe limits have been revised downwards since then. The official OSHA term for this maximum is “threshold limit value” (TLV). (OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor.)

9

And regarding your example of cadmium:

(Cite)

10

r_k, you are my new chemistry-geek hero.