# Nitpitck about Nicotine

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpitck-about-nicotine/404580>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [May 18, 2007, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpitck-about-nicotine/404580 "2007-05-18T11:56:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![grout7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f08c70/32.png) [@grout7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grout7)\
**Post date:** [May 18, 2007, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpitck-about-nicotine/404580/1 "2007-05-18T11:56:50Z")

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Hi Cecil,

In What’s the fastest-acting, most lethal poison? ( [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/070518.html](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/070518.html) ) you suggest that Nicotine is carcinogenic, which it is not.

See for example, that other fountain of fact, Wikipedia ( [Nicotine - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine) ), “The currently available literature indicates that nicotine, on its own, does not promote the development of cancer in healthy tissue and has no mutagenic properties.”

Mark Gilbert

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**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\
**Post date:** [May 18, 2007, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpitck-about-nicotine/404580/2 "2007-05-18T17:15:53Z")

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Welcome to the SDMB, grout.

This topic came up the last time Cecil implied that nicotine was carcinogenic. See [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=367340) from last year. There seems to be some controversy over whether nicotine itself is carcinogenic, but in any case it probably isn’t among the most important carcinogens in cigarette smoke.

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**Author:** ![polyparadigm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bc8723/32.png) [@polyparadigm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/polyparadigm)\
**Post date:** [May 18, 2007, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpitck-about-nicotine/404580/3 "2007-05-18T18:30:07Z")

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Two more to nitpicks:

First, botulin is most frequently encountered by your readers as part of a medical procedure, either to end uncontrollable muscle spasms or to cosmetically immobilize face muscles. Poisoning seems to only happen on the order of 100 times per year in America.

Secondly, the poison in arrow frogs isn’t produced by the frogs themselves, but by [[Mites give poison frogs their toxic might | New Scientist](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11855-mites-give-poison-frogs-their-toxic-might.html)"] mites in their diet]([Mites give poison frogs their toxic might | New Scientist](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11855-mites-give-poison-frogs-their-toxic-might.html)) .

Lastly, and this isn’t a nitpick at all, I think you’ve forgotten a very powerful poison that’s quite difficult to detect. One could argue that the mis-folded proteins that cause spongiform encephalopathy are a particularly deadly and subtle class of poison, rather than a lifeform in their own right. Thinking of a prion as a contagious organism that reproduces using proteins of a similar peptide sequence may be a useful model in many ways, but form another point of view a prion is just another chemical, with a particularly insidious catalytic action.