CIGARETTES - A mini Chemical Factory

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I am a smoker, and I am not proud of it. I wish I didn't take that first puff. But i live everyday with the hopes that one day I would stop. For the other smokers out there, let me cite an Article on the October 2004 issue of Health Today. "There are 600 chemical additives being used in cigarettes, a total of 4,000 chemicals in the average stick, and 40 are known carcinogens (cancer-causing). A cigarette is a mini chemical factory." What's inside a stick of cigarette.... NICOTINE: Black Leaf 40 is a brand name of an insecticide that contains 40% nicotine is is used to kill 33 different agricultural pests, from insects to mites to rabbits and dogs. Once nicotine is puffed, the body struggles to get rid of it by releasing sugar from the liver and by supplying more oxygen to the brain. Blood pressure goes up and due to the body's speeding up, a certain "high" is achieved. There are 1.2 milligrams of nicotine in a cigarette - 60 milligrams can kill a human being. ACETONE: A highly flammable liquid Ketone widely used as an organic slovent and as material for making plastics. It is also a nail polish remover. AMMONIA: A caustic agent found in bathroom and dry cleaning products. BENZENE: Used in a wide variety of chemical products including DDT, detergents , insecticides and motor fuels. CARBON MONOXIDE: What comes out of your car's exhaust pipes. FORMALDEHYDE: An extremely poisonous liquid used to preserve dead bodies, and as a disinfectant. LEAD: A dense metallic element, used in containers and pipes for corrosives, solder and type metals, bullets, radiation shielding, paints and antiknock components. TAR: A dark, oily, viscous material, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons. Smoking 1 pack of cigarettes a day for 1 year is like drinking 1 cup of engine oil, in terms of tar intake. GLYCYRRHIZIN: A bronchodilator, i.e., it opens up the lung membranes, increasint the amount of nicotine that enters the body. just to add... "Marlboro Man" Wayne Mclaren died of cancer in 1992 at the age of 51. A pack-and-a-half-a-day smoker, he succumbed to the dreaded disease in spite of chemotherapy and surgery to remove a lung. He started to campaign against smoking in 1989 when he found out he had cancer. "I'm dying proof that smoking kills", he said. Five of the six Marlboro Man models died due to smoking