Re: dioxins from cigarette smoking

[Alan Watson <alanwatson@gn.apc.org>]

 Yoke Berry wrote:

>At a recent seminar on dioxins a Public Health Official, in trying to avert
>attention from the high dioxin emissions from the local sinter plant,
>stated that cigarette smoking also produced dioxins. It was claimed that 20
>cigarettes could expose a person with 4.3 pg/kg/day.
>How correct is this and is there a scientific paper to back it up ?
>Thanks for your help and I apologize if this subject has been discussed 
>before.

Without going into the (very helpful and interesting) detail that Tony 
provided I have seen data showing about 1ng/m3 I TEQ for cigarette smoke 
which makes these intakes look plausible. I have often wondered whether 
the dioxin intake from cigarette emissions may be a significant 
contributor to the health effects from smoking but have never seen this 
discussed.  Has anybody any thoughts on this?  

However I don't think that this helps the operators of the sinter plants 
as they are producing massively more total emissions which are then 
released in an toxicologically uncontrolled way - and the ultimate 
receptors have no choice about their exposure.Smokers  know that what 
they are doing is slowly killing them.  

You can argue that as some members of the community (children, fish oil 
consumers and even smokers) are already significantly exceeding the WHO 
TDI then any additional external source must be eliminated.

Best wishes

Alan

PS Haven't they also suggested that Volcanoes and barbecues are also 
major source ? - the apologists here normally throw those in even though 
we are not overtroubled by volcanic activity in England and Wales  


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