It seems that tobacco is not dangerous enough to alert everyone; researchers have recently found three types of pesticides in its smoke.
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Three types of pesticides in tobacco smoke |
These chemicals (commonly used in tobacco farms under the approval of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA) disrupt the endocrine system in humans, affecting the thyroid gland, other glands, and the hormones they secrete.
However, it has only recently been discovered that these pesticides remain intact through processing and burning, and linger in cigarette smoke. They include:
– Flumetralin, an endocrine disruptor that has been banned in tobacco use in Europe.
– Pendimethalin, an endocrine disruptor that affects the thyroid gland.
– Trifluralin, an endocrine disruptor that impacts metabolism and reproductive capabilities.
The latter two compounds are also suspected to be carcinogenic to humans.
“There is no information about the inhalation of these substances at low levels,” said Kent Voorhees, a member of the research team from the Colorado School of Mines. “And there is also no data on the combined risk of these pesticides with each other, or with more than 4,700 other compounds identified as present in tobacco.”
T. An
