Stop Smoking Help

Cigarette Ingredients

Everyone is aware that smoking is hazardous to your health because cigarettes contain numerous harmful chemicals and additives; but what exactly makes up a cigarette? We know that cigarettes contain tobacco and nicotine, two ingredients that render smoking pleasurable and addictive. Apart from the nicotine which, when inhaled, reaches the smoker's brain in a mere six seconds, cigarettes contain tar, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, arsenic, carbon monoxide and dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT), just to name a few. Some of these ingredients, in their purest form, are the key component in particularly serious practices. For instance, formaldehyde is used to embalm corpses and hydrogen cyanide is used in gas chambers!

Know your Enemy
One thing we are sure of is that cigarette smoke contains carcinogens, which are cancer-causing agents, and that the carbon monoxide associated with smoking is poisonous. Although the average person can recognize certain cigarette ingredients and can understand their detrimental effect on the body, many harmful chemicals are not listed on the cigarette package. Below is a list of ingredients found in cigarettes and an indication of their more common use:

• Acetone: a compound used in nail polish remover
• Arsenic: a common ingredient used in rat poison
• Butane: an ingredient in lighter fluid
• Cadmium: a component used in batteries
• Methanol: a chemical component used in rocket fuel
• Napthalene: one of the key ingredients in mothballs
• Toluene: a chemical utilized in industrial cleaning products
• Nitrobenzene: an additive in gasoline
• Propylene glycol: an ingredient in lock de-icer
• Styrene: the ingredient used in the making of Styrofoam
• DDT: a key ingredient in insecticides.

Many cigarette ingredients have been approved as food additives, but the chemical reaction that occurs when these ingredients are burned has never been fully tested. It is difficult to determine the effects of each ingredient singularly, and practically impossible when it is compounded with other chemicals. Igniting these substances and submitting them to prolonged burning changes their properties. Approximately 4,000 chemical compounds are created when a cigarette is lit!

Other Frightening Factors
Did you know that fiberglass bits can be found in cigarettes? Fiberglass is an inorganic construction material mostly used to build the tough hulls of boats and to manufacture thermal and sound insulation. Fiberglass dust is known to cause irritation to the lungs and respiratory tract.

Chewing tobacco can make very tiny cuts in a smoker’s mouth which allows the nicotine and other harmful cigarette ingredients to get to the bloodstream at a faster rate.