Cigarettes Contain Chemicals
Although the primary ingredient in cigarettes seems to be natural tobacco, a number of natural and synthetic chemicals are added to cigarettes to make them more appealing to smokers. According to chemists at the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., cigarettes contain more than 4,000 chemicals, nearly four dozen of which are known carcinogens. Among the more prevalent chemicals in cigarettes are nicotine, formaldehyde, ammonia, arsenic, tar and phenylacetic acid.
Cigarette Smoke is Not Clean
While some of the chemicals found in cigarettes are burned off during the smoking process, many survive and even more are created. Arsenic and tar, for example, cannot be broken down by the heat of the cigarette; these chemicals are simply carried into the air as particulates in the cigarette's smoke. The actual process of smoking, too, generates additional dangerous compounds such as carbon monoxide; the creation of these gasses further pollutes the air around a burning cigarette.
Cigarettes Release Pollutants
As a cigarette burns and its smoke is released, tiny particles of the more than 4,000 chemicals packed into the cigarette are released into the air. In addition, the smoke that is inhaled by the smoker can not be totally absorbed by the lungs, so it is released with small amounts of the original pollutants plus trace amounts of the smoker's bodily fluids. As these particles float upward on the cigarette's smoke, they dissipate into the surrounding air to produce pollution. Many of the particles and bodily fluids produced during the smoking process are short lived, so the greatest pollution effect is in the area immediately surrounding the smoker. Despite its limited spread, however, this pollution is acute. A 2004 study by Giovanni Invernizzi from the Tobacco Control Unit of Italy's National Cancer Institute in Milan found that three burning cigarettes produced significantly more pollution than a running diesel car engine. The study was reported in the journal "New Scientist."
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