Major Ideas
- Tobacco plants accumulate small concentrations of polonium 210, a radioactive isotope that mostly originates from natural radioactivity in fertilizers.
- Polonium 210 is one of many decay products of uranium.
- Uranium 238 decays to radon 222 (a gas) and then to lead 210, which settles on tobacco leaves and later converts into polonium 210.
- Smokers inhale the polonium, which settles in “hot spots” in the lungs and can cause cancer. Its effects may lead to thousands of deaths a year in the U.S. alone.
- The tobacco industry has known for decades how to virtually eliminate the polonium from cigarette smoke but kept its knowledge secret and failed to act.
- The Food and Drug Administration now has the authority to regulate tobacco and could begin to use it by forcing manufacturers to reduce polonium content.
- The temperatures of smoldering tobacco, polonium turns into vapor.
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Author's Main Point |
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