7 ms·

Radioactivity in Tobacco

65 points by ahiknsr 6y ago

barney54 6y ago
"Toxic chemicals in tobacco smoke are the main reason cigarettes cause cancer, but radiation also may play a part." That's the best that EPA can do here? Is there really no data?
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  No one has conclusively shown that radiation causes or does not cause cancer at low doses, on the order of the world's variation of the natural background radiation dose. There are lots of data. It is noisy.
  - User23 6y ago
    It may even be healthy[1]. It stands to reason that organisms that evolved in a radioactive environment would have some physiological ability to compensate and that it would follow the general adaptation pattern. Mithridatism is very real after all. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      Or, it may be even more dangerous at low doses than LNT implies. The data are too noisy to tell.
ccffpphh 6y ago
Is radium only present in tobacco fertilizers? What separates tobacco fertilizers from other plant fertilizers? Am I at risk for eating tomatoes grown with normal off-the-shelf fertilizer?
- tdy721 6y ago
  Well, don’t eat the tomato leaves for one. If you compare the mass of undried tobacco leaves to a similar amount of food, I would guess similar exposures. I would also guess that the fruit contains more water, therefore a slightly less concentration of radiation. It’s also about the system, lungs vs digestion. Digestion has been dealing with natural radiation for longer than we have been smoking. Good question! I also want to point out things like strawberries are irradiated on purpose to extend shelf life, not the same thing as radionuclides in the food, but a nice example of radiation protecting the food supply and preventing quick spoilage. Edit: I think all fertilizers are the same, mostly from petrochemical stock. Nothing separating tobacco and food fertilizer.
  - ccffpphh 6y ago
    Most food is irradiated, yes. Prevents potatoes from sprouting, sterilizes tons of food, etc. I am very familiar with that, but didn't realize that radionuclides were ever-present in fertilizers. I grow my own tea, and use fertilizer. Am I at risk for the same issues after processing the leaves? Additionally, would this then extend to cannabis as well? While they aren't leaves, I'm assuming that radium would end up there as well if in the fertilizer. I guess what I'm trying to say is what is it specifically about tobacco - is it the mechanism of intake of the tobacco plant specifically, is it a property of all plants and fertilizer, or is it only a property of specific parts of all plants?
    - 52-6F-62 6y ago
      To your last question--as a severely amateur player in this one: tomato and tobacco are both nightshades so I imagine the growth of the leafing parts are similar in action. Hopefully someone else will either correct me or elaborate.
    - Symbiote 6y ago
      > Most food is irradiated, yes. No, far from it. Extremely little food is irradiated. "103,000 tonnes of food products were irradiated on mainland United States in 2010" "6,876 tonnes of food products were irradiated in European Union countries in 2013" The average American consumes a tonne of food per year, and the average European probably isn't much different. That's 0.03% of food in the USA, and less than 0.001% respectively. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation
acidburnNSA 6y ago
This is very nearly useless because it doesn't give the range of dose rates they see in tobacco (am I missing them!?). Low radiation doses are normal and natural and have been part of life forever. High doses from concentrated stuff can cause trouble. So what range are we dealing with here!? When you have detectors capable of seeing a single atom decaying, quantitative dose rates are always required to have a meaningful and useful conversation.
- abpavel 6y ago
  Incorrect. There is no such thing as safe dose with Radon. You're thinking of gamma rays and 50mSv/year safe limit. You won't find safe limit for Radon. There are guidelines when you should be very concerned, but there is no safe limit. It decays into radioactive lead, and once we breath it in, it's hard to get rid of, and stays in our bodies.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - gbin 6y ago
    I have a hard time making sense of this. Would it mean 1 atom of Rn is always fatal for any individual? The fact that it accumulates in the body doesn't mean it is fatal at any dose.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      No, of course not, but Radon is highly radioactive and extremely small amounts are enough to measurably elevate your risk of cancer. We’re talking numbers like a few million molecules in a room.
      - gmueckl 6y ago
        We need to be more specific: Radon is a gas that goes through alpha decay. It is this specific combination that makes it dangerous. The gaseous form enables easy ingestion by breathing and alpha particles are extremely damaging at short ranges - sub-mm in solid matter. The dead outer skin layer is normally able to perfectly absorb alpha particles which make most emitters effectively harmless. Ingested alpha emitters are different as the emitted alpha particle enters living cells immediately. At that point it is a game of chance whether something gets destroyed or altered that is important for cell reproduction. Also, ingested radioactive emitters are impossible to remove from the human body.
mark-r 6y ago
Bananas are radioactive too, due to their potassium content. Nobody worries much about those.
- riffraff 6y ago
  Radioactivity derived from tobacco is significantly higher than from bananas. There is a very nice episode of Veritasium (science divulgation YouTube channel) which shows exactly this together with other "well known" radioactive sources (e.g. Chernobyl, Fukushima, Marie Curie's office etc)
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Potassium cycles through the body quickly.
User23 6y ago
Also polonium. https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/smoking.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/smoking.htm
throw_away 6y ago
> Tobacco farmers use fertilizer to help their crops grow. These fertilizers contain a naturally-occurring radionuclide, radium. Radium radioactively decays to release radon gas, which then rises from the soil around the plants. As the plant grows, the radon from fertilizer, along with naturally-occurring radon in surrounding soil and rocks, cling to the sticky hairs on the bottom of tobacco leaves, called trichomes. Radon later decays into the radioactive elements lead-210 and polonium-210. Rain does not wash them away. Polonium-210 is an alpha emitter and carries the most risk. Isn't this true of every plant we cultivate and put into our bodies? Or is there something particular about tobacco trichromes and Radon? Or tobacco-specific fertilizers? Inhalation vs. ingestion? This is all coming on the heels of learning yesterday that everyone has like 20-60 lbs of lead in their back yard: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23039020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23039020
- BlueYoshi 6y ago
  Tobacco leaves have sticky hairs on their underside, which is what makes them different from other crops: it’s these hairs that absorb the radon and prevent it from being washed away with water. Also, the type of fertilizer used for Tobacco might be different than fertilizers used for other crops.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    > sticky hairs Reminds me. My ex-wifes grandmother said when she was a little girl her family packed up from tobacco country to California. And her utter joy when her mother told her that no they don't grow tobacco in California. Because picking tobacco is gross and nasty work.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      It is, and the US still allows child labour in tobacco farming. https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/video/2014/05/13/made-usa-child-labor-tobacco https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/video/2014/05/13/made-usa-c... https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/09/teens-tobacco-fields/child-labor-united-states-tobacco-farming https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/09/teens-tobacco-fields/c... https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/05/13/tobaccos-hidden-children/hazardous-child-labor-united-states-tobacco-farming https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/05/13/tobaccos-hidden-childr... https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/05/10/dispatches-obama-bans-e-cigarettes-kids-not-child-labor-tobacco-fields https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/05/10/dispatches-obama-bans-e-...
pm90 6y ago
Hate to be that person but... does the cannabis plant have similar properties?
- staplor 6y ago
  I believe it would since cannabis also has sticky trichromes on its bud and surrounding leaves.
t0ughcritic 6y ago
Is this applicable to vape salts as well?
- raverbashing 6y ago
  I'm guessing they're mostly synthetic so, probably not.
lihaciudaniel 6y ago
Radioactivity in Meth. The devices and instrument used in the production of Meth have been seen to contain a lot of unclean particles and may be the cause for users to get sick
smdz 6y ago
Every year 8 million people die because of tobacco. In the US alone, the number of deaths (due to tobacco) per year is close to half a million. Similarly between 4-7 million people die due to air pollution. Ironically, that does not alarm anyone, that does not cause lockdowns, that does not require flattening the curve. The numbers don't lie - global lockdowns that led to significant drop in air pollution may have coincidentally saved more lives and helped mother nature heal.
- simonhamp 6y ago
  That’s because no one has found a way to make billions of dollars out of Coronavirus yet
- pm90 6y ago
  Smoking is a choice.
  - mpranjic 6y ago
    Secondhand (passive) smoking often isn't. :(
- bpizzi 6y ago
  Conflating tobacco induced deaths with covid19 deaths is, for one, a giant big mental shortcut. Then throwing lockdowns in it. And finally ending of a 'mother nature is wounded' note. This is not Reddit guys.
dr_dshiv 6y ago
Has this been measured in tobacco-based vape liquid?

65 points by ahiknsr 6y ago

"Toxic chemicals in tobacco smoke are the main reason cigarettes cause cancer, but radiation also may play a part." That's the best that EPA can do here? Is there really no data?

acidburnNSA 6y ago
No one has conclusively shown that radiation causes or does not cause cancer at low doses, on the order of the world's variation of the natural background radiation dose. There are lots of data. It is noisy.
- User23 6y ago
  It may even be healthy[1]. It stands to reason that organisms that evolved in a radioactive environment would have some physiological ability to compensate and that it would follow the general adaptation pattern. Mithridatism is very real after all. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    Or, it may be even more dangerous at low doses than LNT implies. The data are too noisy to tell.

ccffpphh 6y ago

Is radium only present in tobacco fertilizers? What separates tobacco fertilizers from other plant fertilizers? Am I at risk for eating tomatoes grown with normal off-the-shelf fertilizer?

tdy721 6y ago
Well, don’t eat the tomato leaves for one. If you compare the mass of undried tobacco leaves to a similar amount of food, I would guess similar exposures. I would also guess that the fruit contains more water, therefore a slightly less concentration of radiation. It’s also about the system, lungs vs digestion. Digestion has been dealing with natural radiation for longer than we have been smoking. Good question! I also want to point out things like strawberries are irradiated on purpose to extend shelf life, not the same thing as radionuclides in the food, but a nice example of radiation protecting the food supply and preventing quick spoilage. Edit: I think all fertilizers are the same, mostly from petrochemical stock. Nothing separating tobacco and food fertilizer.
- ccffpphh 6y ago
  Most food is irradiated, yes. Prevents potatoes from sprouting, sterilizes tons of food, etc. I am very familiar with that, but didn't realize that radionuclides were ever-present in fertilizers. I grow my own tea, and use fertilizer. Am I at risk for the same issues after processing the leaves? Additionally, would this then extend to cannabis as well? While they aren't leaves, I'm assuming that radium would end up there as well if in the fertilizer. I guess what I'm trying to say is what is it specifically about tobacco - is it the mechanism of intake of the tobacco plant specifically, is it a property of all plants and fertilizer, or is it only a property of specific parts of all plants?
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    To your last question--as a severely amateur player in this one: tomato and tobacco are both nightshades so I imagine the growth of the leafing parts are similar in action. Hopefully someone else will either correct me or elaborate.
  - Symbiote 6y ago
    > Most food is irradiated, yes. No, far from it. Extremely little food is irradiated. "103,000 tonnes of food products were irradiated on mainland United States in 2010" "6,876 tonnes of food products were irradiated in European Union countries in 2013" The average American consumes a tonne of food per year, and the average European probably isn't much different. That's 0.03% of food in the USA, and less than 0.001% respectively. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation

acidburnNSA 6y ago

This is very nearly useless because it doesn't give the range of dose rates they see in tobacco (am I missing them!?). Low radiation doses are normal and natural and have been part of life forever. High doses from concentrated stuff can cause trouble. So what range are we dealing with here!? When you have detectors capable of seeing a single atom decaying, quantitative dose rates are always required to have a meaningful and useful conversation.

abpavel 6y ago
Incorrect. There is no such thing as safe dose with Radon. You're thinking of gamma rays and 50mSv/year safe limit. You won't find safe limit for Radon. There are guidelines when you should be very concerned, but there is no safe limit. It decays into radioactive lead, and once we breath it in, it's hard to get rid of, and stays in our bodies.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gbin 6y ago
  I have a hard time making sense of this. Would it mean 1 atom of Rn is always fatal for any individual? The fact that it accumulates in the body doesn't mean it is fatal at any dose.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    No, of course not, but Radon is highly radioactive and extremely small amounts are enough to measurably elevate your risk of cancer. We’re talking numbers like a few million molecules in a room.
    - gmueckl 6y ago
      We need to be more specific: Radon is a gas that goes through alpha decay. It is this specific combination that makes it dangerous. The gaseous form enables easy ingestion by breathing and alpha particles are extremely damaging at short ranges - sub-mm in solid matter. The dead outer skin layer is normally able to perfectly absorb alpha particles which make most emitters effectively harmless. Ingested alpha emitters are different as the emitted alpha particle enters living cells immediately. At that point it is a game of chance whether something gets destroyed or altered that is important for cell reproduction. Also, ingested radioactive emitters are impossible to remove from the human body.

mark-r 6y ago

Bananas are radioactive too, due to their potassium content. Nobody worries much about those.

riffraff 6y ago
Radioactivity derived from tobacco is significantly higher than from bananas. There is a very nice episode of Veritasium (science divulgation YouTube channel) which shows exactly this together with other "well known" radioactive sources (e.g. Chernobyl, Fukushima, Marie Curie's office etc)
saagarjha 6y ago
Potassium cycles through the body quickly.

User23 6y ago

Also polonium. https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/smoking.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/smoking.htm

throw_away 6y ago

> Tobacco farmers use fertilizer to help their crops grow. These fertilizers contain a naturally-occurring radionuclide, radium. Radium radioactively decays to release radon gas, which then rises from the soil around the plants. As the plant grows, the radon from fertilizer, along with naturally-occurring radon in surrounding soil and rocks, cling to the sticky hairs on the bottom of tobacco leaves, called trichomes. Radon later decays into the radioactive elements lead-210 and polonium-210. Rain does not wash them away. Polonium-210 is an alpha emitter and carries the most risk. Isn't this true of every plant we cultivate and put into our bodies? Or is there something particular about tobacco trichromes and Radon? Or tobacco-specific fertilizers? Inhalation vs. ingestion? This is all coming on the heels of learning yesterday that everyone has like 20-60 lbs of lead in their back yard: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23039020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23039020

BlueYoshi 6y ago
Tobacco leaves have sticky hairs on their underside, which is what makes them different from other crops: it’s these hairs that absorb the radon and prevent it from being washed away with water. Also, the type of fertilizer used for Tobacco might be different than fertilizers used for other crops.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  > sticky hairs Reminds me. My ex-wifes grandmother said when she was a little girl her family packed up from tobacco country to California. And her utter joy when her mother told her that no they don't grow tobacco in California. Because picking tobacco is gross and nasty work.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    It is, and the US still allows child labour in tobacco farming. https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/video/2014/05/13/made-usa-child-labor-tobacco https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/video/2014/05/13/made-usa-c... https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/09/teens-tobacco-fields/child-labor-united-states-tobacco-farming https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/09/teens-tobacco-fields/c... https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/05/13/tobaccos-hidden-children/hazardous-child-labor-united-states-tobacco-farming https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/05/13/tobaccos-hidden-childr... https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/05/10/dispatches-obama-bans-e-cigarettes-kids-not-child-labor-tobacco-fields https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/05/10/dispatches-obama-bans-e-...

pm90 6y ago

Hate to be that person but... does the cannabis plant have similar properties?

staplor 6y ago
I believe it would since cannabis also has sticky trichromes on its bud and surrounding leaves.

t0ughcritic 6y ago

Is this applicable to vape salts as well?

raverbashing 6y ago
I'm guessing they're mostly synthetic so, probably not.

lihaciudaniel 6y ago

Radioactivity in Meth. The devices and instrument used in the production of Meth have been seen to contain a lot of unclean particles and may be the cause for users to get sick

smdz 6y ago

Every year 8 million people die because of tobacco. In the US alone, the number of deaths (due to tobacco) per year is close to half a million. Similarly between 4-7 million people die due to air pollution. Ironically, that does not alarm anyone, that does not cause lockdowns, that does not require flattening the curve. The numbers don't lie - global lockdowns that led to significant drop in air pollution may have coincidentally saved more lives and helped mother nature heal.

simonhamp 6y ago
That’s because no one has found a way to make billions of dollars out of Coronavirus yet
pm90 6y ago
Smoking is a choice.
- mpranjic 6y ago
  Secondhand (passive) smoking often isn't. :(
bpizzi 6y ago
Conflating tobacco induced deaths with covid19 deaths is, for one, a giant big mental shortcut. Then throwing lockdowns in it. And finally ending of a 'mother nature is wounded' note. This is not Reddit guys.

dr_dshiv 6y ago

Has this been measured in tobacco-based vape liquid?