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• What's in a cigarette?
  • A cigarette looks like a very basic and simple device, made up of a paper tube filled with chopped up tobacco leaf, usually with a filter at the mouth end. In reality it is a highly engineered product designed to deliver a steady dose of nicotine to the user.
    
    Modern cigarettes have much more than tobacco leaf in them; they also include tobacco waste from the production process, which in turn is mixed with water, flavourings and additives. (There are over 600 permitted additives).
    
    Manufacturers include things like moisturisers to prolong the shelf life of the product, sugar and sweeteners to reduce the harshness of the smoke taste and flavourings like menthol to numb the throat and make inhalation easier and cocoa to dilate the airways.
    
    The filter on a cigarette is made from cellulose acetate to trap some of the tar and smoke particles from the inhaled smoke, and they also cool the smoke slightly making it easier to inhale.
    
    There are over 4000 chemicals in tobacco smoke that can be released into the air as particles and gases. Some of these will cause irritation and at least 60 are known or suspected causes of cancer.
  • Just a few things cigarette smoke contains
    
    Acetone - which can be found in paint stripper
    Ammonia - which can be found in floor cleaner
    Arsenic - which can be found in rat poison
    Butane - which can be found in lighter fuel
    Cadmium - which can be found in batteries
    Carbon Monoxide - which can be found in vehicle exhaust fumes
    Cyanide - which can be found in gas chambers
    DDT - which can be found in insecticide
    Formaldehyde - which can be found in embalming fluid
    Methanol - which can be found in rocket fuel
    Naphthalene - which can be found in mothballs
    Tar - which can be found in road surfaces
    Toluene - which can be found in industrial solvents
    Vinyl chloride - which can be found in plastics
    

• Benefits to your health begin the minute you stop smoking!
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