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<DIV class=timestamp>December 1, 2006</DIV>
<DIV class=kicker><NYT_KICKER>Op-Ed Contributor</NYT_KICKER></DIV>
<H1><NYT_HEADLINE type=" " version="1.0">Puffing on Polonium
</NYT_HEADLINE></H1><NYT_BYLINE type=" " version="1.0"></NYT_BYLINE>
<DIV class=byline>By ROBERT N. PROCTOR</DIV><NYT_TEXT></NYT_TEXT>
<DIV id=articleBody>
<P>Stanford, Calif.</P>
<P>WHEN the former K.G.B. agent Alexander V. Litvinenko was found to have been
poisoned by radioactive polonium 210 last week, there was one group that must
have been particularly horrified: the tobacco industry. </P>
<P>The industry has been aware at least since the 1960s that cigarettes contain
significant levels of polonium. Exactly how it gets into tobacco is not entirely
understood, but uranium “daughter products” naturally present in soils seem to
be selectively absorbed by the tobacco plant, where they decay into radioactive
polonium. High-phosphate fertilizers may worsen the problem, since uranium tends
to associate with phosphates. In 1975, Philip Morris scientists wondered whether
the secret to tobacco growers’ longevity in the Caucasus might be that farmers
there avoided phosphate fertilizers.</P>
<P>How much polonium is in tobacco? In 1968, the American Tobacco Company began
a secret research effort to find out. Using precision analytic techniques, the
researchers found that smokers inhale an average of about .04 picocuries of
polonium 210 per cigarette. The company also found, no doubt to its dismay, that
the filters being considered to help trap the isotope were not terribly
effective. (Disclosure: I’ve served as a witness in litigation against the
tobacco industry.)</P>
<P>A fraction of a trillionth of a curie (a unit of radiation named for
polonium’s discoverers, Marie and Pierre Curie) may not sound like much, but
remember that we’re talking about a powerful radionuclide disgorging alpha
particles — the most dangerous kind when it comes to lung cancer — at a much
higher rate even than the plutonium used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
Polonium 210 has a half life of about 138 days, making it thousands of times
more radioactive than the nuclear fuels used in early atomic bombs. </P>
<P>We should also recall that people smoke a lot of cigarettes — about 5.7
trillion worldwide every year, enough to make a continuous chain from the earth
to the sun and back, with enough left over for a few side-trips to Mars. If .04
picocuries of polonium are inhaled with every cigarette, about a quarter of a
curie of one of the world’s most radioactive poisons is inhaled along with the
tar, nicotine and cyanide of all the world’s cigarettes smoked each year.
Pack-and-a-half smokers are dosed to the tune of about 300 chest X-rays. </P>
<P>Is it therefore really correct to say, as Britain’s Health Protection Agency
did this week, that the risk of having been exposed to this substance remains
low? That statement might be true for whatever particular supplies were used to
poison Mr. Litvinenko, but consider also this: London’s smokers (and those
Londoners exposed to secondhand smoke), taken as a group, probably inhale more
polonium 210 on any given day than the former spy ingested with his sushi. </P>
<P>No one knows how many people may be dying from the polonium part of tobacco.
There are hundreds of toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke, and it’s hard to sort
out how much one contributes compared to another — and interactive effects can
be diabolical.</P>
<P>In a sense, it doesn’t really matter. Taking one toxin out usually means
increasing another — one reason “lights” don’t appear to be much safer. What few
experts will dispute is the magnitude of the hazard: the World Health
Organization estimates that 10 million people will be dying annually from
cigarettes by the year 2020 — a third of these in China. Cigarettes, which
claimed about 100 million lives in the 20th century, could claim close to a
billion in the present century.</P>
<P>The tobacco industry of course doesn’t like to have attention drawn to the
more exotic poisons in tobacco smoke. Arsenic, cyanide and nicotine, bad enough.
But radiation? As more people learn more about the secrets hidden in the golden
leaf, it may become harder for the industry to align itself with candy and
coffee — and harder to maintain, as we often hear in litigation, that the
dangers of tobacco have long been “common knowledge.” I suspect that even some
of our more enlightened smokers will be surprised to learn that cigarette smoke
is radioactive, and that these odd fears spilling from a poisoned K.G.B. man may
be molehills compared with our really big cancer
mountains.</P><NYT_AUTHOR_ID></NYT_AUTHOR_ID>
<P id=authorId>Robert N. Proctor is a professor of the history of science at
Stanford University.</P></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>