Clove Cigarettes

Cloves

BigStockPhoto Question: Are Clove Cigarettes a Safe Smoking Alternative?I smoke clove cigarettes, and I've heard that they're safer than smoking regular cigarettes. I know that conventional cigarettes have so many toxic chemicals in them, while clove cigarettes are more natural. Isn't that better for me?Answer: Clove cigarettes, also known as kreteks (pronounced cree-techs), are often mistakenly thought of as a safe smoking alternative. They are not. Produced in Indonesia and distributed worldwide, kreteks are made of up of approximately 60 to 80% tobacco, 20 to 40% ground cloves, clove oil and other additives. Usually machine-rolled, clove cigarettes come with or without filters. While kreteks do not contain the thousands of toxic chemicals that traditional cigarettes do, they are far from good for you. Like bidi cigarettes, kreteks are often a young person's first introduction to tobacco. Between the flavor of cloves and the colorful packaging, this type of cigarette appeals to young smokers and is for this reason considered a "gateway" product. Studies have shown that kreteks deliver more nicotine, carbon monoxide and tar than regular cigarettes, and that kretek smokers face up to 20 times the risk of lung damage as that of nonsmokers. Kretek smokers also increase their risk of heart disease and certain cancers, such as cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, and liver. Naturally occurring in cloves, eugenol is a mild antiseptic and anesthetic. It is sometimes added to traditional cigarettes and is also used in dental products. It is thought that the numbing feature of cloves allows the kretek smoker to inhale longer and more deeply.

In large doses, cloves or clove oil can cause a variety of potentially dangerous problems: nausea / vomiting abdominal pain diarrhea seizures accelerated breathing and heartbeat sleepiness burns in the mouth or throat intestinal bleeding liver or kidney failure.Eugenol Oil Overdose Information Kretek cigarettes are not a safe smoking alternative. Any product that must be lit, burned and inhaled is hazardous to delicate lung tissue and other organs in our bodies. And kretek smokers face the same risk of nicotine addiction that conventional smokers do. There is no such thing as a safe cigarette!

Sources:

Alternative Cigarettes May Deliver More Nicotine Than Conventional Cigarettes August 2003. NIDA Notes, Volume 18, number 2.

Bidis and Kreteks Fact Sheet 28 February 2007. Centers for Disease Control.

Worldwide, Products Other Than Cigarettes Are Children's First Step to Tobacco Use 18 July 2006. National Cancer Institute.

Clove (Eugenia aromatica) and Clove oil (Eugenol) 01 September 2006. Medline Plus.

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Light Cigarettes

Many smokers choose "low-tar," "mild," or "light" cigarettes because they think that light cigarettes may be less harmful to their health than "regular" or "full-flavor" cigarettes.

After all, the smoke from light cigarettes feels smoother and lighter on the throat and chest - so lights must be healthier than regulars, right? Wrong.

The truth is that light cigarettes do not reduce the health risks of smoking. The only way to reduce your risk, and the risk to others around you, is to stop smoking completely.

What about the lower tar and nicotine numbers on light cigarette packs and in ads for lights? These numbers come from smoking machines that "smoke" every brand of cigarettes exactly the same way. These numbers do not really tell how much tar and nicotine a particular smoker may get because people do not smoke cigarettes in the same way the machines do. And no two people smoke the same way.How do light cigarettes trick the smoking machines? Tobacco companies designed light cigarettes with tiny pinholes on the filters. These "filter vents" dilute cigarette smoke with air when light cigarettes are "puffed" on by smoking machines, causing the machines to measure artificially low tar and nicotine levels. Many smokers do not know that their cigarette filters have vent holes. The filter vents are uncovered when cigarettes are smoked on smoking machines. However, without realizing it and because they cannot avoid it, many smokers block the tiny vent holes with their fingers or lips - which basically turns the light cigarette into a regular cigarette. Because people, unlike machines, crave nicotine, they may inhale more deeply; take larger, more rapid, or more frequent puffs; or smoke a few extra cigarettes each day to get enough nicotine to satisfy their craving. This is called "compensating," and it means that smokers end up inhaling more tar, nicotine, and other harmful chemicals than the machine-based numbers suggest. Cigarette makers can also make the paper wrapped around the tobacco of light cigarettes burn faster so that the smoking machines get in few puffs before the cigarettes burn down. The result is that the machine measures less tar and nicotine in the smoke of the cigarette.What is the scientific evidence about the health effects of light cigarettes? The Federal Government's National Cancer Institute (NCI) recently concluded that light cigarettes provide no benefit to smokers' health.* According to the NCI report, people who switch to light cigarettes from regular cigarettes are likely to inhale the same amount of hazardous chemicals, and they remain at high risk for developing smoking-related cancers and other diseases. There is also no evidence that switching to light or ultra-light cigarettes actually helps smokers quit.What do tobacco companies say about the health effects of light cigarettes? The tobacco industry's own documents show that companies were well aware that smokers of light cigarettes compensate by taking bigger puffs. Industry documents also show that the companies were aware early on of the difference between machine-measured yields of tar and nicotine and what the smoker actually inhales. The NCI report concluded that strategies used by the tobacco industry to advertise and promote light cigarettes were intended to reassure smokers and to prevent them from quitting, and to lead consumers to perceive filtered and light cigarettes as safer alternatives to regular cigarettes.What is the bottom line for smokers who want to protect their health? There is no such thing as a safe cigarette. The only proven way to reduce your risk of smoking related disease is to quit smoking completely. Here's good news: Smokers who quit before age 50 cut their risk of dying in half over the next 15 years compared with people who keep smoking. Quitting also decreases your risk of lung cancer, heart attacks, stroke, and chronic lung disease.*National Cancer Institute. Risks Associated with Smoking Cigarettes with Low Machine-Measured Yields of Tar and Nicotine. Smoking and Tobacco Control Monograph 13. Bethesda, MD: NCI 2001
This article courtesy of NCI

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Chemicals in Cigarettes

As smokers, we don't think about the chemicals in cigarettes. We think about how cigarettes help us cope with the stress of daily life, how they calm us down when we're angry, help us relax at the end of a long day, comfort us when we're sad or lonely. Harmful chemicals in cigarettes? No, we don't think much about that.

The truth of the matter is that smoking does the opposite of just about everything we give it credit for. When the chemicals in cigarettes are inhaled, they put our bodies into a state of physical stress by sending literally thousands of poisons, toxic metals and carcinogens coursing through our bloodstream with every puff we take. And those chemicals affect everything from blood pressure and pulse rate to the health of our organs and immune system.

While researchers are still working to uncover all of the hazards cigarettes present to human life, we do know that air tainted with cigarette smoke is dangerous for anyone who breathes it -- smoker or not.

Let's take a closer look at some of the harmful chemicals in cigarettes and how they affect our health.

A carcinogen is defined as any substance that can cause or aggravate cancer. Approximately 60 of the chemicals in cigarettes are known to cause cancer.

TSNAs
Tobacco-specific N-nitrosamines (TSNAs) are known to be some of the most potent carcinogens present in smokeless tobacco, snuff and tobacco smoke.

Benzene
Benzene can be found in pesticides and gasoline. It is present in high levels in cigarette smoke and accounts for half of all human exposure to this hazardous chemical.

Pesticides
Pesticides are used on our lawns and gardens, and inhaled into our lungs via cigarette smoke.

Formaldehyde
Formaldehyde is a chemical used to preserve dead bodies, and is responsible for some of the nose, throat and eye irritation smokers experience when breathing in cigarette smoke.

Toxic / heavy metals are metals and metal compounds that have the potential to harm our health when absorbed or inhaled. In very small amounts, some of these metals support life, but when taken in large amounts, can become toxic.

Arsenic
Commonly used in rat poison, arsenic finds its way into cigarette smoke through some of the pesticides that are used in tobacco farming.

Cadmium
Cadmium is a toxic heavy metal that is used in batteries. Smokers typically have twice as much cadmium in their bodies as nonsmokers.

There are a couple of toxic metals in cigarette smoke that carry an extra punch of danger for anyone breathing it in: they are radioactive.

Radioactive Cigarette Smoke
Lead-210 (Pb-210) and polonium-210 (Po-210) are poisonous, radioactive heavy metals that research has shown to be present in cigarette smoke.

Poison is defined as any substance that, when introduced to a living organism, causes severe physical distress or death. Science has discovered approximately 200 poisonous gases in cigarette smoke.

Ammonia
Ammonia compounds are commonly used in cleaning products and fertilizers. Ammonia is also used to boost the impact of nicotine in manufactured cigarettes.

Carbon Monoxide
Carbon monoxide is present in car exhaust and is lethal in very large amounts. Cigarette smoke can contain high levels of carbon monoxide.

Hydrogen Cyanide
Hydrogen cyanide was used to kill people in the gas chambers in Nazi Germany during World War II. It can be found in cigarette smoke.

Nicotine
Nicotine is a poison used in pesticides and is the addictive element in cigarettes.

Also known as environmental tobacco smoke, secondhand smoke is a term used to describe cigarette smoke that comes from two sources: Smoke that is exhaled by the smoker (mainstream smoke) and smoke produced by a smouldering cigarette (sidestream smoke). Secondhand smoke is known to contain at least 250 toxic chemicals, including 50 cancer-causing chemicals. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke. That means if you can smell cigarette smoke in the air, it could be harming your health. ...use the tools below to help you get started on your smoke-free journey. There is no time like the present to stop the madness that cigarette smoking is. You'll be rewarded with benefits beyond what you can probably imagine and they'll start to occur faster than you think. Within 20 minutes of your last cigarette, your body will begin to heal and improvements to your mental and physical health will continue to grow with time invested in smoking cessation.

It is never too late to quit smoking!

Sources:

Secondhand Smoke Fact Sheet. September, 2006. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 4 January, 2007. United States Dept. of Health and Human Services.

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