Facts The Cigarette Companies Don’t Want You To Know

Chemicals in cigarettes and tobacco smoke make smoking harmful.

A colourless cyclic hydrocarbon obtained from coal and petroleum, used as a solvent in fuel and in chemical manufacture - and contained in cigarette smoke. It is a known carcinogen and is associated with leukaemia.

A colourless liquid, highly poisonous, used to preserve dead bodies - also found in cigarette smoke. Known to cause cancer, respiratory, skin and gastrointestinal problems.

Used as a flavouring, frees nicotine from tobacco turning it into a gas, found in dry cleaning fluids.

Fragrant volatile liquid ketone, used as a solvent, for example, nail polish remover - found in cigarette smoke.

Particulate matter drawn into lungs when you inhale on a lighted cigarette. Once inhaled, smoke condenses and about 70 per cent of the tar in the smoke is deposited in the smoker's lungs.

An odourless, tasteless and poisonous gas, rapidly fatal in large amounts - it's the same gas that comes out of car exhausts and is the main gas in cigarette smoke, formed when the cigarette is lit. Others you may recognize are :

Arsenic (rat poison), Hydrogen Cyanide (gas chamber poison)

source: Health Education Authority (UK) – Lifesaver

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:31

The findings of a local medical survey into electronic cigarettes has shown that the technology can help smokers kick the habit. Doctors reported that 45 percent of South African smokers who used e-cigarettes were able to quit tobacco smoking within two months.

Over an eight week study period, doctors supplied 349 patients with a electronic cigarette. the e-cigarette is an electronic device that delivers nicotine through vapour but without the tar, carcinogens or smoke found in standard cigarettes. All participating doctors agreed that e-cigarettes are a significantly more healthy alternative to conventional smoking.

The study's outcome revealed that:

· Six per cent of smokers quit within two weeks increasing to 45 percent within eight weeks.

· Fifty-two percent of all patients reported both increased levels of energy and visible improvement in their physical appearance

· When asked what factors about smoking tobacco cigarettes were the hardest to give up, 49 percent of patients said nicotine cravings and 24 percent the habit itself. Twenty seven percent of all participating smokers said that a combination of all factors — the habit, nicotine, the taste and feeling of smoking — made it hard to quit.

When asked if an e-cigarette could act as an agent to overcome all the physical and psychological challenges to quit tobacco smoking, all doctors said 'yes'.

Dr Clifford Hulley, one of the participating medical professionals in the survey, reported that "an e-cigarette is the most effective treatment method on the market for quitting tobacco smoking".

Prof Martin Veller, Head Vascular Surgeon at the University of the Witwatersrand, who participated in the project said that e-cigarettes have the appearance of normal tobacco cigarettes but are non-toxic. "Motivated by my wife's experience, who smoked traditional cigarettes heavily until the moment she replaced them with electronic cigarettes, I have advised my patients to consider e-cigarettes as an alternative nicotine source."

Dr Kishore Deva, a general practitioner from Pretoria, quit tobacco using a electronic cigarette over a six week period and reported that "around 10 to 15 a electronic cigarette puffs are equivalent to the same amount of nicotine delivered by a tobacco cigarette". He added that "nicotine is not responsible for the health risks that tobacco cigarettes hold. In my view a electronic cigarette is a safe product to use".

Earlier this year Health New Zealand carried out trials into the safety of e-cigarettes. According to the head of research Dr Murray Laugeson, the test found that e-cigarettes were very safe relative to cigarettes, and also safe in absolute terms on all measurements.

"Using micro-electronics, an e-cigrarette vaporises, separately for each puff, very small quantities of nicotine dissolved in propylene glycol, two small well-known molecules with excellent safety profiles, into a fine aerosol. Each puff contains one third to one half the nicotine in a tobacco cigarette's puff. The cartridge liquid is tobacco-free and no combustion occurs."

According to Matt Salmon, president of the Electronic Cigarette Association (ECA) in the USA, available data indicates that electronic cigarettes reduce the risk of illness and death to under one percent of the risk posed by tobacco cigarettes which are responsible for 400 000 deaths per year in the US — more than Aids, drugs, homicides, fires and auto accidents combined.