Radioactive Cigarettes

If tar, chemicals, a revolting smell and eventual cancer aren't enough to get folks to stop smoking maybe a healthy dose, or unhealthy as the case may be, of radiation might do the trick.

From Science News...

Burning tobacco unleashes hundreds of chemicals, many of which may play a role in lung cancer. Below the radar screen of most environmental scientists and physicians, however, is the radioactive contamination of tobacco with polonium-210. The April issue of the Health Physics Society newsletter crossed my desk today with a four-page feature on this pollutant in cigarettes. I was familiar with the issue generally, having written about it 27 years ago. What I wasn’t aware of until reading this new piece was that “a filter for removing it [polonium-210] from cigarette smoke has been available for more than 40 years.”

It is not, of course, employed by cigarette manufacturers.

Update: Remember the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko who was assassinated in 2006 in London via radioactive poisoning? The substance used...polonium 210.