Ciggyfree Blog

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently fined Vector Tobacco Inc. $65,040 for allegedly misusing six pesticides and failing to comply with federal pesticide worker safety laws, the EPA announced today.

Vector Tobacco, a subsidiary of Vector Tobacco Group of Durham, NC, allegedly misused six pesticides during their application at its agricultural research facility in Kekaha, Kauai, in 2005 and 2006.

The Hawaii Department of Agriculture discovered the violations during inspections performed in March and June of 2006. Worker complaints triggered the initial investigation. Since the inspections, Vector Tobacco has shut down the Kekaha facility.

The EPA said that on 93 occasions, Vector Tobacco failed to follow label directions intended to protect workers from exposure to pesticides, in violation of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.

New study from Canadian researchers published in Addictive Behaviors

Parents who smoke cigarettes around their kids in cars and homes beware – second-hand smoke may trigger symptoms of nicotine dependence in children. The findings are published in the September edition of the journal Addictive Behaviors in a joint study from nine Canadian institutions.

“Increased exposure to second-hand smoke, both in cars and homes, was associated with an increased likelihood of children reporting nicotine dependence symptoms, even though these children had never smoked,” says Dr. Jennifer O’Loughlin, senior author of the study, a professor at the Université de Montréal’s Department of Social and Preventive Medicine and a researcher at the Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal.

“These findings support the need for public health interventions that promote non-smoking in the presence of children, and uphold policies to restrict smoking in vehicles when children are present,” adds Dr. O’Loughlin, who collaborated with researchers from the Université de Sherbrooke, the Université de Moncton, the University of British Columbia, McGill University, Concordia University and the Institut national de santé publique du Québec.

/PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — Lung Cancer Alliance President and CEO Laurie Fenton-Ambrose issued the following statement:

 http://www.lungcanceralliance.org

In my travels around the internet today I ran across an exceptionally interesting article that I felt I must share with you.  On a larger scale our planet is fueled by water and without water, our planet could not sustain life.

I think that every human on this planet has been touched by tainted water supplies.  We are all 1-3 degrees connected via toxins, drugs, or skewed DNA.  We can’t get away from it.

On a smaller scale the human body is fueled by our blood supply and without blood we cannot exist.  With ten pints of blood the heart can pump enough through the arteries to get to our lungs and every other tissue in our body! The connectedness of water and blood leaves me wondering if perhaps we are all addicts to the substances pumped into our environment?

[BARCELONA, SPAIN] — Researchers from the University of Barcelona and water corporation Group Agbar have found that conventional drinking water treatment sequences can remove “drugs of abuse,” both legal and illegal, from contaminated water, according to a recent article in Environmental Science & Technology.

The researchers took samples of water from Spain’s Llobregat River and its tributaries, where more than 55 treatment plants dump their treated wastewater. Sampling was performed at more than a dozen sites during different seasons over a one year period, followed by one year of regular monitoring. The group tested for drugs such as LSD, phencyclidine (PCP), cocaine, ecstasy, caffeine and nicotine. Data shows the river was flooded with caffeine and trace levels of nicotine, and contained about 15 grams of cocaine per day, according to the article. Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), which is known by the street name ecstasy, was also found.

1878: Eighty-six years before the U.S. surgeon general issues a report confirming the dangers of smoking tobacco, a letter from English physician Charles R. Drysdale condemning its use appears in The Times of London.

Drysdale, the senior physician to the Metropolitan Free Hospital in London, had already published a book on the subject, Tobacco and the Diseases It Produces, when he wrote the letter that described smoking as “the most evident of all the retrograde influences of our time.”

Drysdale had been on an anti-smoking crusade since at least 1864, the year he published a study documenting the effects on young men of consuming ¾ ounce of tobacco daily. That study reported cases of jaundice, and at least one subject having “most distressing palpitations of the heart.”

Drysdale’s book pinpointed nicotine as the dangerous agent and reported its ill effects on the lungs, circulation system, even the skin. Havana-cut tobacco contained roughly 2 percent nicotine, while Virginia tobacco was a more toxic 7 percent, Drysdale pointed out. (Tobacco was a product of the New World and had to be imported to Europe.)

(Reuters Health) - The risk of lung cancer is increased in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, even after taking into account the effects of tobacco and asbestos exposure, according to a case-control study in US military veterans.

Using a Veterans Health Administration database, Dr. Ritu Khurana, at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, and fellow researchers obtained medical records for approximately 480,000 patients treated between 1998 and 2004, including 7280 diagnosed with lung cancer and 8678 diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.

TOBACCO companies have covered up for 40 years the fact that cigarette smoke contains a dangerous radioactive substance that exposes heavy smokers to the radiation equivalent of having 300 chest X-rays a year.

Internal company records reveal that cigarette manufacturers knew that tobacco contained polonium-210 but avoided drawing public attention to the fact for fear of “waking a sleeping giant”.

Polonium-210 emits alpha radiation estimated to cause about 11,700 lung cancer deaths each year worldwide. Russian dissident and writer Alexander Litvinenko died after being poisoned with polonium-210 in 2006.

The polonium-210 in tobacco plants comes from high-phosphate fertilisers used on crops. The fertiliser is manufactured from rocks that contain radioisotopes such as polonium-210 (PO-210).
The radioactive substance is absorbed through the plant’s roots and deposited on its leaves.  People who smoke one-and-a-half packets of cigarettes a day are exposed to as much radiation as they would receive from 300 chest X-rays a year, according to research.

New health warning labels such as “Cigarettes are a major source of radiation exposure” have been urged by the authors of a study published in this month’s American Journal of Public Health.  “This wording would capitalise on public concern over radiation exposure and increase the impact of cigarette warning labels,” the Mayo Clinic and Stanford University authors say.

Quit Victoria executive director Fiona Sharkie said Australian tobacco companies were not legally obliged to reveal the levels of chemicals contained in cigarettes.  This made it difficult to know exactly how damaging PO-210 was and meant it was impossible to know what effect it had on other poisons contained in cigarettes.

“It (PO-210) is obviously highly toxic and we applaud any efforts to publicise the dangers,” she said.
“But the industry needs to be better regulated before we can support specific warnings.”  Inhalation tests have shown that PO-210 is a cause of lung cancer in animals.  It has also been estimated to be responsible for 1% of all US lung cancers, or 1600 deaths a year.

The US authors analysed 1500 internal tobacco company documents, finding that tobacco companies conducted scientific studies on removing polonium-210 from cigarettes but were unable to do so.  “Documents show that the major transnational cigarette manufacturers managed the potential public relations problem of PO-210 in cigarettes by avoiding any public attention to the issue.”

Philip Morris even decided not to publish internal research on polonium-210 which was more favourable to the tobacco industry than previous studies for fear of heightening public awareness of PO-210.  Urging his boss not to publish the results, one scientist wrote: “It has the potential of waking a sleeping giant.”  Tobacco company lawyers played a key role in suppressing information about the research to protect the companies from litigation.

A Kansas State University psychology professor’s research suggests that nicotine’s power may be in how it enhances other experiences. For a smoker who enjoys drinking coffee, the nicotine may make a cup of joe even better.

And that may explain why smoking is so hard to quit.

“People have very regimented things they do when they smoke,” said Matthew Palmatier, assistant professor of psychology at K-State. “If you think about where people smoke or who they smoke with, you realize that it occurs in very specific places, often with a specific group of people. Maybe it’s a reason why nicotine is so addictive — if you get used to having that extra satisfaction from things you normally enjoy, not having nicotine could reduce the enjoyment in a given activity.

“People may not be smoking to obtain a pleasurable drug state. They may be smoking in order to regulate their mood, and that effect could make nicotine more addictive than other drugs.”

Palmatier said much previous research on nicotine addiction has looked at the drug itself rather than the other factors he is studying.

“The approach we’re taking is out of left field,” he said. “But it seems to be one of the best explanations as to why people smoke.”

Palmatier has a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to understand how this phenomenon can be used to better design tobacco addiction treatments, usually offered in patches and pills. He began psychological research in addiction as a graduate student and later began researching the reinforcing effects of nicotine.

“The big picture is trying to figure out why people smoke,” Palmatier said. “There are a lot of health risks, and the majority of smokers already know what they are. They want to quit but can’t. It’s not because nicotine is a potent drug; it doesn’t induce significant amounts of pleasure or euphoria. Yet, it’s just as difficult if not more difficult to quit than other drugs.”