Cigarette Additives May Make It Tougher to Quit
Mar. 23 -- FRIDAY, Aug. 3 (HealthDay News) -- More than 100 of 599 additives that might be in cigarettes are potentially harmful, with some making cigarettes even more addictive and others making it difficult for people to detect tobacco smoke in their midst, a new study contends.
Trade secrecy about the ingredients in cigarettes makes it impossible to know how many of the additives that appear on a 1994 list are actually in tobacco products today. Still, there's plenty of reason to be alarmed, said study lead author Dr. Michael Rabinoff, an assistant research psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"They're making people less aware of tobacco [smoke] and making the cigarette more addictive," he said. "There is so much going on with these additives that it's an uncontrolled experiment on billions of people around the planet."
Contrary to what smokers might assume, cigarettes aren't simply tobacco rolled up in pieces of paper. "They're highly engineered by the industry to smoke in certain ways and taste in certain ways," said James Pankow, a professor at Oregon Health & Science University who studies cigarette smoke and tobacco additives.
Some additives may seem harmless, such as sugar. But even that can become harmful when combusted to form other compounds, he said.
The study was released online this week and will appear in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health. It is being released as Congress considers whether to allow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products. On Wednesday, a Senate committee approved a bill granting such oversight.
In the study, Rabinoff and his colleagues examined a 1994 list of cigarette additives that they said the tobacco industry acknowledged using. It's not clear how many of the additives are still being used, or how common they are. According to the researchers, the tobacco companies are required to provide a confidential list of additives to the federal government each year.
