Most people are not aware of what’s in their cigarette smoke, says survey
A national phone survey conducted by the University of North Carolina (UNC) Center for Regulatory Research on Tobacco Communication recently revealed that most people tried to find out what chemicals are in tobacco products or smoke, but most were not familiar with components other than nicotine.
More than half of the respondents, 5,000 US adults surveyed by phone, said they’d like to see this information on cigarette packs and a quarter would like to have access to it online.
According to one of the study authors, Dr. Kurt M. Ribisl of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at UNC, 93 of the 7,000 ingredients in cigarette smoke are particularly toxic. In an interview, he said it was pretty surprising how relatively few people have heard of these yet many were interested in hearing more about them.
He said that the most simple and effective way is to list the chemicals and, briefly, their health effects. For instance, cigarette smoke contains arsenic, which causes heart damage, and formaldehyde, which causes throat cancer.
The study targeted high-smoking/low-income areas and cell phone numbers.Almost a quarter of respondents reported being smokers, most saying they had smoked every day for the past month.
The researchers chose 24 harmful chemicals in tobacco and divided them into six groups of four. Each participant answered questions about one group of four chemicals, selected at random.More than a quarter of respondents said they had looked for information on the constituents of tobacco smoke, most commonly young adults and smokers. More than half said they would most prefer to see this information on cigarette packs.
The researchers reported in their findings, published in BMC Public Health, that only 8% of respondents knew that at least three of the four chemicals they were asked about are present in cigarette smoke.
According to Dr. ReinskjeTalhout of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment at the Center for Health Protection in The Netherlands, having this information may help smokers make an informed decision, but there is no evidence yet on how it may change smoking behavior.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a list of harmful and potentially harmful tobacco components available to consumers, and tobacco manufacturers are obliged to send this list and amounts in their products to the FDA, Talhout said.
Ribisl also noted that it’s still not clear how providing this information on packs might change behavior, and it is possible that listing amounts of chemicals will simply lead consumers to “comparison shop” and choose a brand with marginally lower amounts of the same dangerous chemicals, rather than quitting altogether.
He said that both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and FDA are very credible sources about this information.
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