Chemicals in smoke

[Mercedes Benzene]

What are some of the lesser known --albeit potent-- chemicals that one inhales while smoking tobacco or marijuana products??

I've never really had time to research that, but have always been interested.

I would imagine there would be the typical carcinogenic hydrocarbons associated with the burning of organic materials, but what about some of the more complex and little-known chemicals??

[InfiniteNow]

We'd run out of space if we were to list them all. Here's some data from a site that I trust:

 

 

http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_10_2X_Environmental_Tobacco_Smoke-Clean_Indoor_Air.asp

Secondhand tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemical compounds. More than 60 of these are known or suspected to cause cancer.

[ughaibu]

How about secondhand car exhaust fumes?

[Mercedes Benzene]

It seems that someone always ruins the fun of my threads with a link. hahaha.

Thanks though!

[UncleAl]

Tobacco use has an 80% incidence of contingent cancers. Putting a pinch between cheek and gum gives you leukoplakia and oral cancer. Smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer,

 

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/523/3

 

At least three divergences come to mind,

 

1) Tobacco accumulates polonium. Phosphate fertilizer concentrates uranium and its decay daughters. Alpha-emitter are serious local carcinogens ("hot particle" theory).

 

2) Tobacco pest control was arsenic-based for decades. Heavy metals persist in soil and arsenic is carcinogenic.

 

3) Commercial tobacco contains additives,

 

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/tobacco.zip

[InfiniteNow]

Smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer,

 

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/523/3

 

There are some interesting aspects to the article you reference UncleAl, and I'm not ready yet to say "Let's toke, it won't cause cancer!"

 

They did a self-report measure of cancer patients, and did so after the fact. While the sample size was large enough to eliminate most of the noise, self-reports are notoriously inaccurate. (Also, they WERE smoking pot, so what are the chances they are remembering accurately how much they smoked? ;) )

 

Another issue is that (as far as I could tell) the study did not control for extraneous variables. To put information like this into the spotlight they are, they should have at least minimized the thousands of other differences between participants. Same diet, same sleep schedule, same exercise regimen, similar lifestyle, etc. This would allow the reader of the study to put a higher confidence on the idea that chronic was the lone variable of cause.

 

I'd also have preferred if the study gathered a large group of relative homogeneity BEFORE any pot had been smoked and done significant screening procedures and data collection on everyone. Then, have one group smoke no pot, another smoke some pot, and another smoke all the time. Then, monitor participants annually with the same barrage of questions, and compare cancer rates in another 15, 20, 30, and 50 years.

 

Maybe that will be done soon. It was an interesting article though. Thanks for posting it. :cup: