Radioactive Polonium-210
found in Tobacco!
(also found throughout the food chain in trace amounts... cancer's rise
explained?)
Association Researchers say
that the interdiction of cellular apoptosis by Nicotine, which prolongs
mutated/damaged cells lives further (apoptosis insures longevity by causing
damaged cells to die and replace with new regenerated cells, in the body),
plus the long term consequences of Polonium 210 from the Tobacco plants,
which provide over 75 mRads of Radiation Per Day (that's the same as between
3 and 50 Chest-X-Rays will give you, every Pack of Cigarettes you smoke)
applied directly to the Lungs, and the resulting damage to your Lungs,
prolonged by the Nicotine, lead to virtually ALL Lung Cancers among Smokers
today. Changing Tobacco growing methods to eliminate the Polonium-210
is an ABSOLUTE MUST, FIRST STEP and WILL OVER TIME ELIMINATE ALL THESE
RESULTING LUNG TUMORS/CANCERS.. The ACSA seeks any and all financial and
other help in achieving this end by appropriate scientific means. Call us at
908-931-1390 during normal business hours or email us at info@acsa2000.net
if you wish to contribute or otherwise make a difference.
---
FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION ---
Lives could be saved by simply changing fertilizers, they say... Almost 95% of the
Lung Cancer caused by Cigarettes are allegedly the result of using calcium
phosphate fertilizer to grow the Tobacco. The resulting Cigarettes bearing a
combination of local Radon gasses and radioactive Polonium from the
Tobacco leaves deposit a small dose of radioactive isotopes directly into a
smoker's lungs as they smoke (or breath
smoke laden air)! For the "pack-a-day" smoker, it has been
alleged that this dose would be the same as if you were forced to have
between 300 and 8000 Chest X-Rays a year! If this
startling fact be true, then it appears that your Lungs could literally be converted into a toxic, irradiated Nuclear Dump by the
majority of today's commercially grown and factory manufactured Cigarettes!
And we've been told that, through a minor change in the way Tobacco is grown,
hundreds of thousands of lives might be saved each year in America alone! The
elimination of Radioactive Polonium from Tobacco, stops the process
altogether, in 98% of the cases, for it appears to be responsible for the
vast majority of the toxicity, that increases the likelihood of Cancer in a
Smoker because, they say, constant long term exposure to the Polonium 210
dust in Tobacco smoke, causes the Lung Tissue to MUTATE... making other
carcinogens 100s of times more likely to trigger Lung Cancer, leading to
180,000 American deaths from the disease. While science doesn't yet
know how many Lung Cancer victims will be saved by eliminating Polonium,
evidence appears to suggest "most of the case". Second Hand
Smokers are at the same risk for later life Lung Cancer from the same
source, too. (read this short article by David Malmo-Levine, a Marijuana
advocate, that explains it all in very simple terms: CLICK
HERE>
)
About the only problem with Mr. Malmo-Levine's article is that the rise of
the use of Calcium Phosphate Fertilizer among Mexican, South American and Hawaiian
Marijuana growers is starting to cause a rise in Lung Cancer among Marijuana
users that correlates with the statistical increase of CPF's use. But
he makes an interesting point, because prior to the increased use of CPF by
"pot growers", Lung Cancer from it's use was almost
non-existent. This 'non-scientific' observation does make a serious
point about Polonium's contribution. Please
note: due to the likelihood that excessive smoking of it produces negative
psychological consequences, dramatic increases in estradiol (estrogen in
males), feminizing of men, inappropriate behavioral patterning,
premature aging, heart disease, hair color loss, oxygen deficiency, mental
anxiety and paranoia attacks, loss of income and neural toxicity, the ACSA
does NOT advocate the legalization of Marijuana or any other so-called
dangerous control substance. While certain things are a matter of
personal choice, some have very negative consequences that are at once both
illegal and inappropriate, despite the pleasure associated with them.
In our opinion, Marijuana is not appropriate except under strict medical
care for specific conditions it is used to treat, day to day stress not
being one of them.
Ever wonder why the Cancer Rate among Smokers was so much higher
than the threat posed by Carcinogens in Cigarettes? According to Robert
Martin (his article is below) the Polonium 210, a highly bioactive, radiogenic agent, is being
steadily deposited in minute quantities in your lungs as you smoke.
The Polonium 210 deposited in the average "pack a day" smoker,
which has a half life of 158+ days (that means half of it's mass is
converted into lead, and the radioactive emissions are delivered directly to
your lungs), delivers enough radiation as it decays; to be equal to the
amount of radiation you'd get if you had between 300 and 8000 Chest X-Rays per
year.
According to Mr.
Martin and other experts:
The Polonium decays gradually (1/2 of its
mass per 158 days) into Lead (which is also a poisonous toxin and
carcinogen). The Polonium comes from the Calcium Phosphate based fertilizer,
Tobacco plants love it (because Polonium is metabolized like Calcium by the
Plants, the confuses it for one of the nutrients the needs). That amount of Polonium 210 is enough to cause your Lungs to become riddled with
Tumors over 2 to 6 decades, depending upon your susceptibility to the
mutations in your tissues all the radioactivity being delivered to your
Lungs will ultimately lead to. And it effects almost 90% of all
smokers, at least those who by their mid life to elder years, have not
already succumbed to heart disease, stroke, mouth and gum cancers, emphysema
and other Tobacco related diseases.
150,000 American's die each year
of Lung Cancer (Tobacco linked illnesses are the #1 killer in our country,
by the way). Globally, between 700 and
800,000 people die annually of Lung Cancer. Smoking is considered its #1
cause. And yet, Tobacco could be grown in ammonium-phosphate based or
Organic fertilizers, ELIMINATING most of the toxic radioactive substance
(Polonium 210) which is generally not found in such fertilizer. It has
been estimated that such could reduce Cancers among Tobacco Smokers by as
much as nearly 85-95% !! That is because for Cancer to occur, changes
that lead to it need to take place in the biophysiology of an otherwise
healthy person, so that the normal immunities to cancer development are
defeated. Like "elevating the noise" in a noisy room,
Polonium 210 radiation exposure appears to elevate the amount of toxic-factors
in the cells of the Lungs at the molecular level, causing changes and damage
that could lead
to very severe Cancers, changes that allow other carcinogenic effects of smoking and
lifestyle to take root, leading to vastly higher probability of all
out Lung Cancer in the Smoker.
So, why
aren't the Tobacco Growing and Brokering Companies quickly moving to remedy this problem? It
has been suggested that this is because, once you eliminated the vast number
of cancers made possible by the constant exposure in Smoker's Lungs to radioactive Polonium 210, deposited in minute quantities
over the decades in all active and passive smokers' lungs, then the Cigarette
Companies would resultantly be responsible for the remaining thousands upon
thousands of lung cancer cases that were caused just by Tobacco smoke's own
potentially health hazardous, carcinogenic elements! Can you imagine the audacity of
the Tobacco Brokers who,
knowing this, hide their own responsibility for some of the Cancer by
ignoring the methods of their Tobacco Growers who use calcium phosphate based
fertilizer, in order to avoid legal culpability by skewing the statistical
correlation? One set of responsibility hidden behind equal
degrees of negligence, leading to such murderous consequences? Astonishing
and frightening, isn't it?
Could
it be that the Tobacco Brokering Companies and the Cigarette Manufacturers, through negligence or premeditated conspiracy with
the Tobacco Growers, thereby ultimately responsible for the small doses of
Radiation delivered to their customers in every breath they take in when
smoking their products? Are they thereby knowingly responsible for the
murder of millions of people every decade, all in order to attempt to reduce
their own direct legal liability for the lung and throat cancers Cigarette
Smoking has been allegedly more directly causing thousands from the tar and ash?
They've known since 1963, according to Mr. Martin, that the use of cheap calcium phosphate based
fertilizers by the Tobacco growers in the past 50 years has changed Tobacco into a progressive
radiation delivery vehicle that may be the single most overwhelming
contributor to Lung Cancer
over the course of the life of a Smoker by virtue of "across the
threshold" mutation of Lung tissue into a fertile bed for massive tumorous
growths (as evidenced by the unusually degenerated state of the Lungs when
removed post mortem from a Lung Cancer sufferer, go to any medical library
and take a look at smoker's cancer ridden Lungs, if you don't believe
this!) But the Tobacco Industry has done nothing at all to change
that. Why?
We even asked the world's largest Tobacco products producer, and ended up
being funneled off to a technology company to answer our question, by their
Customer Service Department, which technology company had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
to do with tobacco in any way.
That company, Phillip Morris, was singled out in Israel for a lawsuit by one
of the leading Legal experts in that tiny country, by the son of the
prosecutor who brought many Nazi's to justice in Nurenburg, Germany,
after the end of WWII. Amos Hausner sued Phillip Morris in June 2000
for "poisoning Israelis with radioactive Tobacco" citing memos
that Phillip Morris knew about the Polonium contamination due to calcium
phosphate fertilizer, but did not convince any of the Tobacco Growers who
supplied it, to switch to Polonium 210 free fertilizer, thereby leading to
10,000 deaths among Israelis every year. An article in the Middle East
Times conveys the gravity of this situation more clearly:
click
here.
In the USA, with almost 20 times the death rate, it has been estimated that
Lung Cancer kills about 500 people every day of the week 365 days per year,
on the average. Recently, on 9/11/2002, in the horrific World Trade
Center disaster, some 3000 people were reported killed when Al Qaeda /
Osamma Bin Laden Terrorists, flew four jet liners into the Trade Centers and
the Pentagon, killing many, many innocent people, firemen, policemen, Ems
workers and government officials.
While the comparisons are between entirely different circumstances, and no
one is attempting to minimize either of them, just for the sake of
magnitude, were one to compare the losses in that National Tragedy to the
losses to Lung Cancer each year, one would have to fly 200 Jetliners into 50
Trade Centers, and the Pentagon, every year indefinitely, just to have the
same number of deaths as Lung Cancer is causing. The notion is
staggering.
Any expert in Radiation and its consequences, can tell you that the constant
exposure to decaying Polonium 210 and Radon gasses found in Cigarette Smoke
is ultimately going to be fatal in 90% of the cases of long term exposure
that a lifetime of smoking brings about. We asked the United States
Nuclear Regulatory Agency's top scientists who not only confirmed that the
radioactivity and the Polonium 210 was found in Tobacco. And our interviews
with experts in cancer have brought us to conclude that this factor has to be responsible for the vast, vast majority of the Lung Cancer among
lifelong Smokers? What could possibly justify the position of the
Tobacco Industry to allow this situation to continue? Read on...
-------------- ABOUT POLONIUM
-------------------------------------------------------------
Most people do not
realize how deadly Polonium is: it is about the most deadly isotope on
earth, even tiny, trace quantities of this rare element can kill if properly
administered, and minute traces steadily administered, cause living tissue
to mutate.
By the way, Polonium
(210) is element number 84 in the periodic chart with an atomic weight of
208.98, it's standard state is solid at 298 degrees Kelvin and it is silvery
colored.
Description: Polonium
has more isotopes than any other element, all of which are radioactive.
Polonium dissolves readily in dilute acids, but is only slightly soluble in
alkalis. Weight for weight it is about 2.5 x 10 to the 11th power
times as toxic as hydro cyanic acid (HCN or Cyanide, the stuff used by spies
to commit suicide in those little tooth shaped capsules in James Bond
films). Polonium has been found in tobacco as a contaminant and in uranium
ores.
Polonium is radioactive and excessively
rare in nature. It is made in very small quantities through a nuclear
reaction of bismuth. Neutron irradiation of 209bismuth (atomic number 83)
gives 210polonium (atomic number 84).
-
209Bi
+ 1n 210Po
+ e-
Metallic polonium can be
fractionally distilled from the bismuth or electrodeposited onto a metal
surface such as silver.
The below article was written by Mr. Robert Martin
(rob.m@lycos.com)
It is excellent and has been reprinted here for your reference.
This web page offers a summary of information concerning radioactive elements in tobacco, food, and water. Each footnote contains either a research reference/abstract or a hypertext link followed by a short excerpt from the
web page. A further discussion of
polonium in food and water is linked at the bottom of the page.
It’s an established but little known fact that commercially grown tobacco is contaminated with radioactive elements (1). The contamination is sourced in naturally occurring radioactive radon gas (2) which is absorbed and trapped in apatite rock (3). Apatite is mined for the purpose of formulating the phosphate portion of most chemical fertilizers(4). Polonium releases ionizing alpha radiation which is at least 20 times more harmful than either beta or gamma radiation when exposed to internal organs(5).
Lung cancer rates increased significantly during most of the 1900's (6). Although it has been conclusively proven that tobacco causes lung cancer, researchers have not established that the carcinogens in tobacco are present in high enough levels to explain the numbers of cancer cases(7). Its no coincidence that between 1938 and 1960, the level of polonium 210 in American tobacco tripled commensurate with the increased use of chemical fertilizers and
Persistent Organic Pollutant (POP) accumulation(8).
Conservative estimates put the level of radiation absorbed by a pack-and-a-half a day smoker at the equivalent of 300 chest X-rays every year (9). The Office of Radiation, Chemical & Biological Safety at Michigan State University state in their newsletter that the radiation equivalent was as high as 800 chest X-rays per year(10). The author of the study linked at the bottom of the page stated in an interview that a typical nicotine addict might be getting the equivalent of almost 22,000 chest X-rays per year(11). At one point, US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop stated that this radiation might be responsible for 90% of tobacco-induced cancer(12). Researchers have induced cancer in animal test subjects that inhaled polonium 210 but have not caused cancer through the inhalation of any of the non-radioactive chemical carcinogens found in tobacco(13).
Internal Phillip Morris memos indicate that the tobacco corporation was well aware of radiation contamination in 1974(14), and that they had means to remove polonium from tobacco in 1980 (15).
Radon gas occurs naturally in most places on the planet so most exposure to radiation is unavoidable and relatively harmless(16). The needless additional radiation delivered via fertilizer can be reduced through the use of alternative phosphate sources (17) or organic farming techniques
(18) [ed- and Ammonia Fertilizer].
It may be possible to reduce your polonium intake through smoking cessation or merely switching to an organic brand of tobacco.
VISIT OUR VIRTUAL HOSPITAL
FOOTNOTES:
1. Click here for Tobacco information website
That phosphate fertilizer contains natural radioactivity is a well established fact. Natural uranium accumulates in the phosphate rock...Uranium and its daughters are thus carried through the mining and manufacturing process and appear in the commercial product [the fertilizer used on tobacco plants]. Soils to which these products are applied show an increase in radioactivity over that naturally present and this increase is a function of the rate of application and the number of years that the fertilizers have been used....Thus, the smaller particles [of the fertilizer] which would be more likely to be made airborne by normal farming practices, would be expected to settle out on the tobacco leaves during the growing season and/or be more readily taken up by the plant root system.
The recommendation of using ammonium phosphate instead of calcium phosphate as fertilizer is probably a valid but expensive point...
2. BC Government Health website
Radon is a naturally-occurring, radioactive gas which is given off by traces of uranium in soil and rock. It is found at varying levels all over the world….The Ministry of Health estimates that about 100 people a year die of radon induced lung cancer in the Province of British Columbia. Radon likely causes more lung cancers than second hand tobacco smoke.
US Government geology website
Radon is a gas produced by the radioactive decay of the element radium….Radon itself is radioactive because it also decays, losing an alpha particle and forming the element polonium.
Polunium is also radioactive - it is this element, which is produced by radon in the air and in people's lungs, that can hurt lung tissue and cause lung cancer.
3. Australian Geology Website
...natural uranium-bearing minerals, such as apatite
4. Mining and Oil Industry Newsletter
The phosphate rock is commercially available as "apatite"….Phosphogypsum is a by-product or tailings product of phosphate production into phosphoric acid. It is created when sulfuric acid is used with phosphate rock to produce phosphoric acid. Phosphoric acid is used in the production of phosphatic fertilizers. Because of other elements present in phosphates deposits such as uranium and cadmium, phosphogypsum typically contains radon and other radioactive materials and can be extremely hazardous.
5. Types of radiation
The three main types of radiation, alpha, beta, and gamma have different penetrating abilities. Alpha radiation to external skin is no hazard because it is likely that the outer (dead) layer of the skin stops all alpha radiation. But if alpha radiation is received internally than the damage to the surrounding tissue is expected to be 20 times more harmful than the expected damages from beta or gamma radiation.
6. Dr. Smith's Health Newsletter
The evidence is definite. Cancer statisticians have had trouble explaining the increased lung cancer rate despite the almost 20 percent reduction in tobacco use in males. It was 4/100,000 in 1930, then 40/100,000 in 1960, and by 1980 it had climbed to about 72/100,000. The same with women, despite the fact that ladies smoke filtered cigarettes which filters out benzopyrine and
nitrosamine, two acknowledged carcinogens.
7. Scientific American
Hardly any researchers doubt that repeatedly exposing parts of the body to, for example, chemicals in tobacco smoke, may eventually bring about the cellular damage that can lead to cancer. But the details of how most exposures give rise to such damage remain elusive.
8. Dr. Smith's Health Newsletter
Here may be an explanation: Dr. Jerome Marmorstein found radioactive polonium in the lungs of smokers and in tobacco grown since 1950. Polonium levels tripled in American tobacco between 1938 and 1960.
This radioactive polonium, plus some lead and radium found in cigarettes and the lungs is directly related to the fertilizer used in tobacco farm soil. The Tennessee Valley authority helped fund apatite rock grinding factories for the tobacco farmers. That's where the polonium came from.
Polonium emits the most carcinogenic form of radioactivity known, but has a short half-life (four months). However, it binds with radioactive lead which has a 22 year half-life, and then breaks down into radioactive polonium.
Link to PubMed abstract of Dr. Marmorstein's research
9. Typical School Anti-smoking Campaign Information
POLONIUM: radiation dosage, equal to 300 chest x-rays in one year
10. Safe Science Newsletter, Michigan State University
When you light up a cigarette the polonium is volatilized, you inhale it, and it is quickly deposited in the living tissue of the respiratory system. It is estimated that if you smoke one and a half packs of cigarettes a day for one year the bronchial tissues will receive approximately 16,000 millirem of radiation exposure (one chest x-ray could deliver 20 - 30 millirem to the same tissue). In comparison, the federal limits of radiation exposure to the general public from man-made occupational radiation may not exceed 100 millirem per year or 2 millirem in any one hour.
11. Healthweek Magazine - Interview with Gustave Kilthau
"Smokers of one-and-a-half packs of cigarettes a day receive approximately 60 millirads of radiation daily (as much as 60 chest X-rays), which is 21.9 rads per year (as much as 21,900 chest X-rays) or 547.5 rads over a course of 25 years (equivalent to 547,500 chest X-rays). Bear in mind that we are considering the inhaling of smoke from U.S. grown tobacco. Divide that by five and a half for tobacco grown in India."
12. Dr. George - Health Information
It is accepted by a growing number of scientists today that all American cigarettes contain significant levels of polonium-210, the same sort of radiation given off by the plutonium of atom bombs (ionizing alpha radiation). It just so happens that the tobacco plant's roots and leaves are especially good at absorbing radioactive elements from uranium-containing phosphate fertilizers that are required by U.S. law, and from naturally occurring radiation in the soil, air, and water.
In fact, this radioactivity, according to C. Everett Koop, not tar, accounts for at least 90% of all smoking-related lung cancer.
Dr. R.T. Ravenholt, former director of World Health Surveys at the Centers for Disease Control, agrees with the risk, asserting that "Americans are exposed to far more radiation from tobacco smoke than from any other source."
13. Click here for several informative letters written by tobacco researchers
The importance of proper assessment of the risk to cigarette smokers from radionuclides in the smoke cannot be overstated. In view of the present knowledge, it is improbable that a single area of a few square millimeters of high alpha activity in the bronchial tree is important. Nonetheless, Po210 is the only component in cigarette smoke tar that has produced cancers by itself in laboratory animals as a result of inhalation exposure.
14. Phillip Morris internal memo regarding radioactive content of tobacco (many more available using search function)
15. Phillip Morris internal memo regarding removal of polonium from tobacco
16. Uranium Information Centre
"Naturally occurring background levels of radiation can typically range from 1.5 to 3.5 millisieverts
(muSv) a year and in some places can be much higher. The highest known level of background radiation affecting a substantial population is in Kerala and Madras States in India where some 140,000 people receive an annual dose rate which averages over 15 millisieverts per year from gamma, plus a similar amount from radon."
"Any dose of radiation, no matter how small, is assumed to involve a possibility of risk to human health, but at doses below 50 millisieverts per year the risks are so small the effects are not measurable and may be negligible."
17. Florida Institute of Phosphate Research
Results indicate that the radionuclides associated with phosphogypsum do not report to the ammonium sulfate product but are found instead almost exclusively in the by-product calcium carbonate.
18. Environment Canada - Organic Farming
Organic certification standards permit farmers to use only organic or natural rock forms of phosphate. Animal manures are an excellent organic source of phosphorous; however, rock phosphate is essentially unavailable to plants, similar to much of the phosphate already present in the soil. Application of rock phosphate is, therefore, not very effective.
NOW:
PLEASE
SIGN OUR ONLINE PETITION TO THE
US GOVERNMENT TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM: HERE >
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES:
Pediatrics 1993 Sep;92(3):464-5
Cigarette smoke = radiation hazard.
Evans GD, Department of Pediatrics, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Vallejo, CA 94589-2485.
Ohio Med 1987 Feb;83(2):113-6
Tobacco's radiation: its sources and potential hazards.
Rahman SM, Albert CP, Reehal BS
Radiat Res 1980 Jul;83(1):190-6
Alpha Radioactivity in cigarette smoke.
Cohen BS, Eisenbud M, Harley NH
Nature 1974 May 17;249(454):215-7
Radioactivity of tobacco trichomes and insoluble cigarette smoke particles.
Martell EA
Boothe GF. The need for radiation controls in the phosphate and related industries. [Journal Article] Health Physics. 32(4):285-90, 1977 Apr.
Morgro-Campero A. Fleischer RL. Upper limits of alpha-radioactivity per particle of cigarette smoke. [Journal Article] Health Physics. 32(1):39-40, 1977 Jan
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