As of September 30, 2022, PMI’s smoke-free products are available in 70 markets globally. Over 30 percent of our net revenue now comes from these innovative alternatives to cigarettes for those adult smokers who would otherwise continue to smoke. By 2025, we aim to be a majority smoke-free company.

that old horse of mine, "we could reduce lung cancer if cigarette companies were not absolutely brainrotted"

Liggett Tobacco Group acknowledged that solvents used to wash the tobacco leaves also caused “removal of most of the aromatic flavorants which give tobacco its characteristic and desirable aroma.” 43 Liggett’s assistant director of research concluded that washing the tobacco leaf was not commercially advantageous.44

(2006) Waking a Sleeping Giant: The Tobacco Industry’s Response to the Polonium-210 Issue

by Monique E. Muggli, MPH, Jon O. Ebbert, MD, Channing Robertson, PhD, and Richard D. Hurt, MD

ABSTRACT

The major tobacco manufacturers discovered that polonium was part of tobacco and tobacco smoke more than 40 years ago and attempted, but failed, to remove this radioactive substance from their products. Internal tobacco industry documents reveal that the companies suppressed publication of their own internal research to avoid heightening the public’s awareness of radioactivity in cigarettes. Tobacco companies continue to minimize their knowledge about polonium-210 in cigarettes in smoking and health litigation. Cigarette packs should carry a radiation-exposure warning label.

PULLQUOTES

Documents show that the major transnational cigarette manufacturers managed the potential public relations problem of Polonium-210 in cigarettes by **avoiding any public attention to the issue for fear of “waking a sleeping giant.”**3 Despite the industry’s long-time strategy of “creating doubt about the health charges without actually denying it,”4 internal corporate records suggest that manufacturers avoided drawing attention to the PO-210 issue in the public domain. Documents also show that once manufacturers determined that PO-210 was a constituent of tobacco smoke, they attempted, but failed, to remove it. Simultaneously, internal research potentially leading to advancements in scientific knowledge was avoided. Similarly, internal experimental results favorable to the tobacco companies were suppressed from publication by company lawyers despite urgings by internal scientists contending that their data contested reports published in the medical literature. Currently, although all the major tobacco companies would likely admit that PO-210 is present in their products, they continue to minimize its importance in smoking and health litigation and remain silent on the issue on their Web sites and in their messages to consumers.

As high-phosphate fertilizers are applied to tobacco crops, PO-210 is absorbed from the soil through the plant roots.26 PO-210 also deposits on the surface of the tobacco leaf via fine, sticky hairs (trichomes), which bind airborne radioactive dust particles generated during the application of fertilizers.29 PO-210 is thought to be encapsulated with calcium phosphate and lead-210 into insoluble radioactive particles, which are subsequently transferred directly into the mainstream smoke (the smoke that is inhaled directly into smokers’ lungs).29,30

During the 1960s, the major tobacco manufacturers determined that PO-210 was a constituent of tobacco and tobacco smoke.31–37 By 1968, Philip Morris had verified that the levels of PO-210 in its cigarette brands were similar to what had been reported in the literature at the time (0.33–0.36 picocuries per gram [pCi/g] of tobacco materials contained in a cigarette).38
After confirming PO-210 was in tobacco and tobacco smoke, the tobacco industry sought to remove PO-210 from its products but ultimately failed to substantially reduce its concentration in the tobacco leaf. These efforts primarily included washing tobacco leaves, selectively measuring PO-210 in tobacco stock prior to manufacturing commercial cigarettes, filtering mainstream smoke, and employing genetic engineering techniques to reduce leaf radioactivity.

Washing Tobacco Leaves

In documents from the mid-1970s, Philip Morris reported it could use certain nonpolar solvents to wash PO-210 from the tobacco leaf to reduce leaf radioactivity by 10% to 40%.39–41 Former Philip Morris scientist William Farone testified in 2001 about Philip Morris’s washing efforts:

We tried a methodology to remove polonium 210 from the tobacco. One of the researchers working for me spent quite a bit of her career attempting to do that, and we found that we could wash off the tobacco that Philip Morris obtained about half. The other half was inside the tobacco. So it’s hard to wash it off. And it’s difficult to consider how you would go about washing all the tobacco that came into Philip Morris.42

Liggett Tobacco Group acknowledged that solvents used to wash the tobacco leaves also caused “removal of most of the aromatic flavorants which give tobacco its characteristic and desirable aroma.” 43 Liggett’s assistant director of research concluded that washing the tobacco leaf was not commercially advantageous given the loss of aromaticity coupled with the realization of scant health benefit: “[I]t has been our feeling that the disadvantages with respect to economics and loss in flavorants outweigh the advantages of marginally reduced biological activity for this type of process.”44