Brother Veritus' Website

The most salient fact in the history of lung cancer is that it was very, very rare before the invention of cigarettes. If one goes into a medical library and pages through old medical texts from the nineteenth century, one finds almost no reference to lung cancer. If one searches through the medical literature up to the year 1900, there are only references to a total of 100 cases of lung cancer. Even as late as 1912, only 374 cases were found. 100 years of autopsies were reviewed in Dresden, Germany, and it was found that the incidence of lung cancer had gone from 0.3 in 1852 to 5.66% in 1952.

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In the nineteenth century, tobacco was smoked by gentlemen only in the form of cigars. Cigarettes, which were basically the sweepings off the floor of the cigar factory, were only smoked by the very poor. As the machines to mass produce cigarettes came into the fore in the 1880s, smoking cigarettes became more common but the number of cigarettes smoked was still relatively small. During World War I tobacco companies gave away free cigarettes to millions of soldiers, and it was only after the war that large numbers of Americans smoked cigarettes.

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Since there is a time lag of approximately 20 to 30 years between the onset of smoking and the development of lung cancer, the damage done was not immediately apparent. Doctors were surprised to see a sudden epidemic of lung cancer cases in the 1930s. They quickly discovered the association between smoking and lung cancer. Large statistical studies in England and the United States in the 1950s (Doll and Hill, Cutler) conclusively proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that cigarette smoking markedly increased the chances of developing lung cancer.

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By the 1970s, lung cancer had gone from one of the rarest of cancers to the number one killer cancer in the Western world.

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Women did not smoke in the in the early twentieth century USA. They were therefore targeted by an intense marketing campaign in the 1930s, featuring elegant women in evening dresses smoking Lucky Strikes in cigarette holders. Later they were the target of the Virginia Slims. In the Mayo Clinic in the early 1970s lung cancer in women was still unusual, but by 1985, lung cancer had become the number one cause of cancer death in women.

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Tobacco is made up of more than 4,000 chemicals. Most of them are poisonous and at least 60 may cause cancer in humans! The list below shows several of the chemicals in tobacco. It also shows other items where you can find the chemicals. Would you want to put this in your body?

v  Acetylene – a fuel used in torches

v  Acetic Acid – gives vinegar its sour taste and smell

v  Aluminum – soda cans are made of this

v Ammonia – can be found in toilet bowel cleaners and glass cleaners

v  Benzene – used to make rubber, plastic, detergents, and pesticides (bug poison)

v  Butane – fuel in cigarette lighters

v  Cadmium – also found in batteries

v  Chromium – also used to make jet engine parts

v  Carbon Monoxide – deadly gas

v  Copper – found in algaecide to help kill the algae in drinking water

v  Chrysene – forms when gasoline, garbage, or any animal or plant material burns

v  Cyanide – rat poison

v  DDT/Dierldrin – insecticide (bug poison)

v  Formaldehyde – what in injected into a dead body to preserve it from rotting

v  Hexamine – found in barbeque lighters

v  Lead – highly toxic metal

v  Limonene – used as a flavoring

v  Naphthalene – mothball chemical

v  Nicotine – causes addiction in tobacco products

v  Nitric Oxide – a toxic air pollutant produced by automobile engines and power plants

v  Nitrobenzene – gasoline additive

v  Phenol – active ingredient in some oral anesthetics (to numb your mouth)

v  Polonium 210 – nuclear waste

v  Scopoletin – regulates the hormone serotonin

v  Stearic acid – in candle wax

v  Styrene – used in rubber, plastic insulation, fiberglass, pipes, auto parts and more

v  Titanium – found in White Out and commonly used white paint

v  Vinyl Chloride – component of PVC pipe

These are only a few of the 4,000+ chemicals in tobacco. You can go to this website for more chemicals: www.quitsmoking.about.com/cs/nicotinein haler/a/cigingredients.htm .

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Cigarette smoking causes heart disease, stroke, chronic lung disease, and cancers of the lung, mouth, pharynx, esophagus, and bladder. Use of smokeless tobacco causes cancers of the mouth, pharynx, and esophagus; gum recession; and an increased risk for health disease and stroke.

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Approximately 1,200 people die every day from tobacco-related illnesses. That means 1,200 people a day got sick and died as a result of using tobacco products or being victims of second-hand smoke. That equals 50 deaths an hour or 438,000 deaths a year.

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Why do people keep smoking? They are addictive. Addiction makes the body feel like it has to have it. Nicotine is the drug in all tobacco products that hooks its users. It is as powerful as some of the strongest illegal drugs like heroin or cocaine. If you smoke or use tobacco, please get help to stop.

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