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Ruthless and crooked – the tobacco industry’s cover-up about radiation

 The story of polonium highlights the twists and turns made by an industry that puts profits above health, and continues to push a product that kills half of all its long-term users…….  

Tobacco Firms Have Failed to Act on Radioactivity in Cigarettes – Here’s Why HUFFINGTON POST UK, By Oliver Childs,  25/05/2012 It’s a plot worthy of Hollywood – a fatal radioactive poison, secret documents, suppressed information, and drugs.

But this isn’t fiction. This is the story of the tobacco industry’s knowledge, policy and inaction around radioactive material in cigarette smoke. And how it took a painstaking search through thousands of court-ordered documents to uncover exactly why tobacco firms are unwilling to remove this deadly radioactivity, despite knowing how for more than 30 years.
By their own admission, “creating doubt about the health charge without actually denying it” is a strategy the tobacco industry has used effectively for decades, using smoke and mirrors to deflect mounting evidence of the deadly harm caused by their products.

As politicians and the public debate the merits of putting cigarettes in plain packaging to deter new young smokers, this particular story should serve as a timely reminder of how Big Tobacco operates when faced with the possibility of falling profits…….

In 1964, two scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health published a landmark study that revealed that a radioactive element called polonium in cigarettes could be “significant” in the development of lung cancer.

But how does this radioactive chemical get into tobacco in the first place?

There are two main routes. Some tobacco plants are grown using fertilisers that contain apatite, a group of minerals that becomes contaminated with radioactive lead phosphate, the ‘parent’ of polonium. The plants absorb this radioactivity from the fertiliser.

Tobacco plants also absorb tiny dust particles from the air that are loaded with small amounts of radioactive material, including polonium and other radioactive elements that eventually decay into it. These radioactive dust particles clump onto the sticky, hair-like projections (called trichomes) that thickly cover both sides of tobacco leaves.

Cigarettes deliver dangerously concentrated doses of radioactivity directly into the lungs. When smokers inhale, the radioactive particles damage lung tissue, creating ‘hot spots’ of damage.

Other chemicals in cigarette smoke damage the lung’s cleaning systems, which would normally get rid of gunk in our airways. So the particles build up over time. These localised build-ups lead to far greater and longer exposures to radiation than people would usually get from natural sources.

Autopsies of smokers have shown that cancer often develops where these polonium-induced hot spots of damage occur.

The evidence for the cancer-causing effects of radioactive polonium in tobacco smoke is strong. But instead of addressing these findings in public, the tobacco industry turned to denial and cover-ups……

the industry was aware of the presence of higher than background levels of radioactivity in tobacco five years before the wider scientific community had published any research on the topic. In 1959, a Canadian health official – by a quirk of fate called Mr Ash – wrote to tobacco company Philip Morris to ask whether tobacco should be regulated as a “radioactive substance”, and suggested a way to remove up to a third of the radioactive dose from cigarettes.

But this letter was “summarily dismissed” by the tobacco company, according to Professor Karagueuzian.

Second, in the 1960s the industry went on to build an in-depth knowledge about the effects of polonium on smokers. They not only knew of potential cancerous growth in the lungs of regular smokers, but even accurately calculated how much radiation a long-term smoker would take in.

And despite knowing how to remove the deadly radioactivity for several decades, the industry was “unshakable and adamant with respect to its policy of silence, denial, obfuscation, and rebuttal to any and all from of news about tobacco radioactivity”.

The reason? Professor Karagueuzian is convinced profit underpinned this silence and denial……

The term free-basing has more commonly been associated with cocaine addiction, where users seeking a more intense effect from the drug convert it from its normal form to its more intense free-base form.

Free-basing is about giving addicts a drug ‘kick’ as quickly and efficiently as possible. It’s not hard to imagine why an industry that relies on addicts being hooked on their deadly products would resist a process that reduces the effect of their key drug……

The story of polonium highlights the twists and turns made by an industry that puts profits above health, and continues to push a product that kills half of all its long-term users…….  http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/oliver-childs/tobacco-firms-have-failed_b_1541908.html

May 26, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, secrets,lies and civil liberties