Excerpt from Jiangnan Times
"Cigarette factory employees" reveal "ulterior secrets"
Is the low-priced cigarette filter toxic?
Jiangnan Times (20 10, 2004, 65438+ 10, 65438)
"In order to reduce the production cost, some domestic tobacco industries have changed the filter of cigarettes from acetate fiber to polypropylene material, which is very harmful to human body. In order not to let consumers see the flaws, tobacco manufacturers add adhesives and diluents to cigarette filter fillers, which contain a lot of benzene, aromatic hydrocarbons and similar compounds in the paint ... "Recently, a self-proclaimed" tobacco enterprise employee "revealed the secret that the tobacco industry has concealed for many years: cigarette manufacturers use harmful plastic materials to replace low-grade cigarette filters for profiteering. So, is the low-priced cigarette filter toxic?
Inferior cigarette filter tip
"Stealing the beam and replacing the column"?
"The cigarette with acetate fiber filter has high cost, good filtering effect and no harm to human body. In order to reduce costs, some manufacturers use polypropylene (a plastic material) instead of filter materials. Although it is non-toxic, it is drawn into fiber after chemical treatment, which looks similar to acetate fiber. However, after ignition, there may be many tiny filaments invisible to the naked eye that are inhaled into the lungs when smokers smoke. " Employees of tobacco enterprises "said that when the filter tip is connected with cigarettes, the plastic is easy to stick to the knife and is not easy to cut off, so cigarette manufacturers require workers to apply silicone oil on the blade." This series of low-cost production lines have made the cigarettes that were originally harmful to health worse and become "highly toxic cigarettes". However, cigarette manufacturers are worried about changing the taste of cigarettes and causing discomfort to consumers, so they only replace the filters of low-grade cigarettes.
It is reported that at present, the best-selling cigarettes in Nanjing are those produced by Jiangsu China Tobacco Group, and the cumulative sales of cigarettes1844,500 boxes throughout the year. Green Nanjing, Yipin Mei, Fengshou, Redwood Tree, Huaxi Village and other brands also sell a lot of low-priced cigarettes. The operator of a cigarette shop in Madao Street of Confucius Temple in Nanjing told reporters that he mainly engaged in the business of "low-priced cigarettes". All the people who buy cigarettes in his shop are old customers who have smoked for more than ten years. Some of them can smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and choose cheaper cigarettes. He has also heard about changing cigarette filter materials, but whether this is the case or not, he has never asked the relevant departments for verification.
It's really low-grade cigarettes.
Polypropylene filter material
The reporter learned that there are many domestic enterprises producing low-grade cigarettes, and the brand cigarettes of Jiangsu China Tobacco Group and Anhui China Tobacco Group have good sales in the low-grade tobacco market in Jiangsu. And are these low-grade cigarette filters all made of polypropylene? The staff of the Material Supply Department of Jiangsu China Tobacco Group said that at present, most of the cigarette filters produced by the group use acetate fiber, and only low-priced cigarettes in 5 yuan and below such as bumper harvest years use polypropylene. There is no obvious difference between acetate fiber and polypropylene filter. It can hardly be seen from the appearance, but from the taste, the polypropylene filter screen has poor suction resistance, and sometimes it feels more laborious to suck.
The staff of the marketing center of Anhui China Tobacco Industry Company said that the filters of cigarettes are all acetate fibers. Although the filtering effect is good, the cost is relatively high. In 2009, according to the relevant standards, the group replaced the filter tip of low-grade cigarettes with polypropylene material, which is more environmentally friendly and lower in cost. The reporter found that Anhui China Tobacco Industrial Company also applied for a patent for the recycling technology of polypropylene materials for cigarette filters, that is, the discarded inferior filter rods were turned into silk flocs, and then made into polypropylene particles, which were provided to the plastic processing industry as raw materials for production. It can be seen that polypropylene as a cigarette filter material is not groundless.
Tobacco companies claim that
Qualified filter tip
The staff of the quality supervision and testing station of Jiangsu Tobacco Company said that at present, most brands of cigarette filters of the company use acetate fiber materials, and only low-grade products use polypropylene filters. All products must undergo strict quality inspection every year, and only products that meet the national food hygiene and safety standards can be sold. Although the material of polypropylene filter element is chemical fiber, the mouth stick itself does not burn, so whether it is harmful to the body can not be measured by the material alone.
"When smoking, the filter has the function of filtering cigarette tar. When inhaling smoke, the substance of the filter will not enter the human body." According to the staff, the filter tip is integrally pressed and formed, and there will be no fine fibers inhaled into the lungs. In China, smoking has a history of many years, but I have never heard of the precedent of medical identification that filter substances are inhaled into the lungs to cause diseases. The smoke inhaled by smokers is in the lungs, so it is impossible to inhale the filter material into the lungs. However, insiders believe that the test results of a technical department under the tobacco industry department lack credibility.
"Third Party" Quality Inspection
Emergency introduction
Why are the hot spots that consumers pay attention to always detected by the quality inspection stations of tobacco monopoly companies? However, quality supervision, disease control and other relevant departments have not carried out quality supervision. The staff surnamed Qin of the Department of Chronic Infectious Diseases Prevention and Control of Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention said that at present, no consumers have asked the disease control department to test cigarette filter materials, and the provincial disease control department has no test data. The reporter contacted the Nanjing Quality Supervision Bureau, and the relevant person in charge of the Quality Supervision Bureau said that the state has a monopoly on tobacco and the quality supervision department is not qualified to test tobacco.
"The state implements monopoly management on the production and sales of tobacco monopoly products, but the system design should be standardized to the quality supervision department, which is more standardized and credible." As to why the "third party" is not used in filter tip testing, Professor Li, dean of the Business School of Nanjing Normal University, thinks that the quality supervision of cigarettes should be undertaken by specialized technical supervision departments, and the tobacco industry departments should not "test themselves", which may easily cause consumers to question their integrity. Professor Li suggested that the relevant departments can consider handing over the quality supervision and inspection of cigarettes to the quality supervision department to enhance the trust of consumers.
Let me show you these materials again: actually, the filter tip has little effect.
It is well known that the smoke produced by cigarette burning contains hundreds of chemical components harmful to human body, especially more than 40 carcinogens such as tar and nitrosamines.
In order not to lose the market, tobacco manufacturers have come up with a clever way to put a filter on cigarettes, saying that it can prevent harmful chemicals from being inhaled into the body. This move confuses many smokers, who think they can smoke freely through the filter.
As we all know, the filtering function of the filter tip is very limited, which is only self-comfort for smokers, and the substances contained in the filter tip itself are equally harmful to the human body.
According to the survey, the filtration rate of nicotine in cigarettes is 43.28% for long filters and only 9.93% for short filters. However, in the smoke inhaled into the airway, the harmful component carbon monoxide has increased by 30% ~ 40%, and the harm of filter tip to health has increased. American researchers surveyed 3737 smokers, and the results showed that the prevalence of coronary heart disease in smokers with filters was not less than that in smokers without filters, which showed that filters were "powerless" to smokers' health.
Cigarette filters are made of cellulose acetate. Scientists have found that during smoking, especially when smokers flick cigarettes with their fingers or touch the filter with their tongues, several to dozens of tiny fibers will fall off the filter. This kind of fiber, only 20 microns in diameter, can be inhaled into the respiratory tract with high temperature smoke, which will directly drive the alveolar tissue of smokers and become the cause of cancer.
Dr. John Polly of a cancer research institute in Buffalo, new york, USA, accidentally discovered through a microscope that there was a shiny thin rod-shaped body on the pathological tissue section of lung of cancer patients who underwent surgical resection, which came from the fiber contaminated by carcinogens in cigarette filters. This is an unexpected thing for smokers.
In addition, people's fingers are generally in direct contact with the filter tip, and this section of the cigarette becomes the carrier of bacterial contamination. Smokers pass cigarettes to each other in interpersonal communication, which naturally provides a convenient way for cross-infection of diseases.
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