Another reason to quit smoking
Cigarettes more polluting than diesel exhaust
11:20 24 August 04
NewScientist.com news service
The air pollution emitted by cigarettes is 10 times greater than diesel car exhaust, a small Italian study finds.
Researchers compared the particulate matter in the exhaust fumes from a modern car engine, fuelled with low-sulphur diesel, and in cigarette smoke. Three smouldering cigarettes produced a 10-fold increase in air particles compared to those produced by the idling vehicle.
“I was very surprised. We didn’t expect to find such a big difference in the particulate matter produced,” says Giovanni Invernizzi from the Tobacco Control Unit of Italy’s National Cancer Institute in Milan, who led the study.
Ivan Vince, an air pollution expert from Ask Consultants in London, UK, says the findings are reasonable. He notes that cigarettes give off a lot more respirable particulates than the new generation of low-sulphur diesels, which help cut particulate emissions.
Smouldering cigarettes
Invernizzi and colleagues conducted their controlled experiment in a private garage in the small Alpine town of Chiavenna, which enjoys a particularly low level of air pollution.
The car used was 2002 Ford Mondeo turbo diesel with a two-litre engine, and had been on the road for six months. It was left idling in the closed garage for 30 minutes while a portable analyser took particulate air samples every two minutes.
The garage was then aired for four hours, after which the doors were re-closed and three filter cigarettes were burned sequentially over a total of 30 minutes.
The portable analyser showed that 10 times as many pollutant particulates were released in the cigarette smoke as the diesel fumes. And the comparative pollution levels for the tiniest particulates – the most dangerous to health – were even greater.
Eye damage
“The tiny particulates, less than 2.5 micrometres, are able to penetrate right into the alveoli in the lungs, where the carcinogens do the most damage,” Vince says.
“Most of the chemicals emitted from cigarettes are very short-lived and so they mostly damage the local environment. For example, aldehydes damage plants and peoples’ eyes and respiratory tract," he notes. Nitric oxide, also produced by cigarettes, is the culprit in photochemical smog and drives ozone formation in cities.
“But with more and more people being made to smoke outside and in doorways, the external environmental effects must surely rise,” Vince told New Scientist.
Invernizzi is hoping his results will provide a new weapon in the fight against teenage smoking. “Adolescents in Milan campaign against pollution and for a better environment – often with a cigarette hanging out of their mouths. We can show them that smoking also harms the environment.”
Journal reference: Tobacco Control (vol 13, p 219)
- Gaia Vince
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Cigarettes more polluting than diesel exhaust
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
).
and a packet of 105 is around one third of that one 
i would really like to help but i never picked up smoking so i really don't know what it is like to try and quit , so i am sort of lost . . . any ideas?
