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Tobacco, Sugar, flavourings and 'Hit Boosters'
Tobacco is more than just a few dried leaves inside a paper tube. Did you know that "there’s half a teaspoon of processed Sugar in each cigarette. Usually between 10-20% sugar is added to cigarettes, up to 20% in cigars, and around 40% in pipe tobacco." Up to a quarter of a cigarette can be made up of sugars, and almost half the contents of pipe tobacco. This is because tobacco is actually quite harsh when smoked ordinarily, and it must be sweetened in order to be consumable and palatable. This level is sugar is however very low compared to that which is in foods, and does not cause problems for diabetics. Smoking and inhaling sugar has not been proven to be harmful, and not as harmful as drinking Soda pop.
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The remaining ingredients are tobacco, flavourings, and 'Hit Boosters'. The Tobacco itself is most often pre-heated to high temperatures in order to soften it take out most of the harshness. It is left longer in this process for 'Light' cigarettes, until a smaller amount of tobacco fluffs up to fill the same size tube as regular processed tobacco. In 'Ultra Lights', the tobacco is left to cook until all the harshness has gone, and the tobacco is very light and fluffy. You can see a tobacco drying, toasting and cooling machine below.
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The tobacco flakes are then hydrated with Water, and other natural ingredients, to enhance the colour, and flavour. Several active ingredients and special methods of production are involved in making sure the nicotine in a cigarette is many times more potent than that of a tobacco plant.
For one thing, extra Nicotine is added, so that the manufacturer can precisely regulate the nicotine quantity inside each product. A tobacco planet can contain between 0.5 to 7.5% Nicotine depending on the variety. The amount found inside tobacco depends on the brand, and the country of sale. In the UK and in most parts of the world, Ultra Lights are less that 0.5mg Nicotine, Lights 0.5 to 0.7mg, Regular smokes contain 0.8 to 1.1mg, and Strong cigs usually have 1.2 to 1.5mg of Nicotine, and only the very strong brands go higher. In the US, they have slightly higher ratings, with 1.2mg being the Regular average.
Here are a few more American examples of Nicotine in cigarettes:
- Lucky Strike Regular 1.6 mg per cigarette
- Marlboro Red 1.2 mg per cigarette
- Marlboro Light 0.8 mg per cigarette
- Newport Regular 1.2 mg per cigarette
- Newport Light 0.7 mg per cigarette
- Camel Regular 1.4 mg per cigarette
- Camel Light 0.9 mg per cigarette
- Camel Wide 1.2 mg per cigarette
- Capri Super Slim 0.8 mg per cigarette
- Chesterfield Full Flavour 1.5 mg per cigarette
- Parliament Light 0.7 mg per cigarette
- Salem Regular 1.2 mg per cigarette
- Salem Light 0.9 mg per cigarette
- Basic Regular 1.0 mg per cigarette
- Basic Light 0.7 mg per cigarette
- Kool Regular 1.1 mg per cigarette
- Pall Maul Regular 1.7 mg per cigarette
- Virginia Slims 1.1 mg per cigarette
- Winston Regular 1.2 mg per cigarette
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"A single full-size cigar can contain nearly as much nicotine as does a pack of cigarettes." So at 1.2mg per cigarette in a pack of Marlboro Reds, that would be 24mg Nicotine per pack. Yes in practice Cigars can contain any amount of Nicotine that the manufacturer supplies, and some cigars can contain more. Yet all of this is small fry compared to the Nicotine found in so called "Quitting Smoking" tools such as vaping. Here, the 'Regular' strength is 12mg. Yes you did read that right, they multiplied the regular levels by x10 in e-cigs to give them a bigger hit. That means a "Full Flavour" e-cig contains 24mg of Nicotine - the same amount as an average cigar, or one whole pack of Marlboro Reds.
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Nicotine however, like pure Opium, is a biological product of nature, and science has yet to find any harmful effects from using of it. The general consensus is that Nicotine is as harmless as Caffeine. So even though some Far Eastern smokes contain much higher levels than shown here, and some cigars can have 100mg and even 200mg of Nicotine, the fact that Nicotine is present in such small amounts in most cigs (less than 1mg) means it is not only harmless, but also unimportant; especially if you consider that many vegetables also contain Nicotine too.
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TAR is a collective term for the rest of the ingredients in the blend, which bring back the moisture, texture, and richness of the smoke.
The largest part of this TAR is taken up with 'Toppings’ - which are added to the blended tobacco mix to add flavour and a taste unique to the manufacturer. Some of these toppings have included; clove, licorice, orange oil, apricot stone, lime oil, grape, lavender oil, dill seed oil, cocoa, carrot oil, mace oil, myrrh, beet juice, bay leaf, oak, rum, vanilla, and vinegar. Menthol, or derivatives of the mint plant are common.
Now that we have covered the biggest ingredients found within Tobacco, we have gotten down to the fractions of milligrams. This means that we are already talking about a hairs on the back side of an elephant, but lets take a closer look at those micro-ingredients.
Levulinic Acid is one of the largest micro-ingredients, and this is an organic salt which is used to make the tobacco less harsh (again) and smoother.
Acetaldehyde works to enhance the sugars in the tobacco, and to enhance the sugar/nicotine hit. This is also an organic element fundamental to the body, and is found naturally in Coffee, Bread and ripe fruit.
Bronchodilators widen the lungs to allow more smoke to be absorbed. The most common of these is Theobromine, "formerly known as xantheose, is a bitter alkaloid of the cacao plant. It is found in chocolate, as well as in a number of other foods, including the leaves of the tea plant, and the kola (or cola) nut."
And now we move on to the micro-micro elements; those which must be measured in micrograms. These are trace elements are added as a 'secret blend', which helps to make the tobacco burn more evenly, and not just set on fire and burn down in a second. The blend also helps to preserve the tobacco, and add the unique flavour of each brand. These elements are so tiny, that it would take several packs just to gain a few milligrams of the stuff. The body can cope with these with such efficiency, that these traces are neutralised in a few seconds, leaving the smokers head clear for another inhale. Many of these ingredients combust as the tobacco is ignited, or disintegrate at the super-high temperatures at the tip of the cigarette; which can reach 700 deg C (or 1292 deg F) during a normal inhale, or are not absorbed and harmlessly blown out during the exhale. Some of these include Hydrogen cyanide, ammonia and formaldehyde, and some e-cigs also contain these traces too:
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By-Products
Burning any organic element (wood, coal, hamburgers) will produce amounts of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other gasses. Finally, there is a by-product of the drying and toasting process which causes certain gasses to exist in the burning of tobacco. These are called Tobacco-specific Nitrosamines, and can occur in an unregulated amount, depending on the drying process. These aren't ingredients in the same way as the others, as they aren't purposely added to the mixture, but are a by-product of manufacture. Out of all the ingredients we have looked at in this article, this is the only one which has been proven to be carcinogenic - all the others are either harmless or so small that they become harmless. Unfortunately, as these gasses are caused by 'burning stuff', there is not much we can do to avoid them. The body does a good job of filtering these out; but as every-body is difference, some people are many times more susceptible to illness, while others can be almost immune to it.
All of this is then filtered though the cigarette filter, and also by the lungs, with any large particles exhaled on the out-breath. What we end up with is a recipe which looks a bit like this:
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References:
www.buhlergroup.com/northamerica/en/ind ... obacco.htm
www.prosmokestore.com/kb/article/AA-003 ... ettes.html
biology.stackexchange.com/questions/42619/nicotine-levels-in-non-fruit-edible-parts-of-plants-that-are-not-tobacco
www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae1.cfm
Post by Cig reviews on Aug 27, 2017 5:36:25 GMT
You would not want to know what they spray tobacco with and the recon and blow up formaldehyde ammonia Gets kind of scary and yes I smoke whole leaf I m in control in what I smoke not a company.
Post by Dan on Aug 27, 2017 17:43:40 GMT
If you live in America then the fire safe chemicals they spray on the cigs are indeed not good. In fact we dont know how bad they are yet.
If you live in Europe or elsewhere, then Id rather have a few micrograms of the additives you spoke about than 3-10% alcohol in most beers. Alcohol is the chic brain poison, and although those chemicals you mention get a bad rep, they dont actively destroy the blood, skin cells, and all the other vital organs of the body like alcohol. The body is so good at removing these substances, they it can clear the brain of smoke in seconds - while alcohol takes hours. Some people suck back on bud lights all day long. Some live a very long time - but life in general is short for all of us, and we all gotta die sometime. Im in my 40's, and realistically I might have 20-30 good years left, certainly enough time to enjoy life and not worry too much about what happens when I'm dead and gone.
Cigs are relatively harmless compared most legal and non legal drugs, cakes, Twinkies, cliff diving and aggressive sports, bank robbery or murder, climbing up a ladder or crossing the highway. Harm is also a relative term based on use or abuse. For me its all about the great taste of tangy texture tobacco, which I always look forward to.