Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
It’s critical that we re-define the threat to HIV/AIDS patients who can’t quit smoking because the threat from smoking during HIV/AIDS therapy is far greater than anything previously imagined. Quite simply, every tobacco brand we’ve just tested is loaded with hidden fungicides including some of the most potent and dangerous kinds.
New hard data from lab tests we just ran on popular cigarette brands identify fungicides as a hidden factor in the well-documented failure of HIV/AIDS treatment in cases where heavy smoking is involved. A cocktail of unregulated fungicides contaminates every popular tobacco product we tested, and these fungicides interact very negatively with almost every medication used in HIV/AIDS therapies.
Fungus infections are a severe, sometimes nearly intractable HIV/AIDS problem, and Azole-class fungicides are among the most-used in treatment. However, HIV/AIDS healers are very aware that Azole fungicides have serious, sometime severe interactions with many other medications that need to be used. Therefore, cross-exposure is carefully managed.
Hidden Azole-class fungicides in the tobacco brands that patients continue to smoke through treatment are feeding multiple Azole fungicides into their system with every puff. Interactions with their other meds must run wild, and surely nobody can explain them because nobody knows about which fungicides are in the tobacco brand the patient is smoking, or even that this problem exists.
As you can see in the table below, every brand we tested had high concentrations of fungicides, including azole-class fungicides. Note that even the relatively clean American Spirit Blue shows significant contamination, while the Marlboro Reds and Swisher Sweets are very heavily contaminated with multiple fungicides. We tested other brands – these three are quite representative of how the range of contamination correlates with price, meaning that economically marginalized people receive the highest doses of endocrine disrupting chemicals in their smoke. Many of the most difficult HIV/AIDS patients are also economically marginalized and depend on the cheapest tobacco brands, which are the most heavily contaminated with hidden fungicides.
And of course, a young impoverished lifetime of inhaling these immune and endocrine system disrupting chemicals in cheap flavored tobacco products may well have lowered the threshold of vulnerability in HIV/AIDS victims in the first place.
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
People are very likely dying unnecessarily today because of this specific preventable issue, contamination of tobacco products with toxic fungicides that conflict with or cancel their HIV/AIDS therapy. The impact of this hidden toxic cocktail on the chemicals being used in therapy, as well as on the patient’s own organs and endocrine system, are probably what generates the devastation that is seen in these xenobiotic chemical victims. That said, we can’t overlook the separate and equally devastating impacts of DDT, Carbendazim, and other endocrine-disruptors in tobacco products, but this post will focus just on the fungicides.
THE PROBLEM: SUMMARY
We know that even while in therapy, and causing failure of the therapy
1. Many HIV/AIDS victims remain heavy smokers.
2. Azole fungicides interact negatively with almost every HIV/AIDS drug
3. So do many other classes of anti-fungals.
THE CONCLUSION
Hidden Azole fungicides in tobacco products are a major risk factor in the high rates of failure of HIV/AIDS therapy among smokers.
SIMPLE, INEXPENSIVE, & PROBABLY VERY EFFECTIVE
HIV/AIDS clinics can implement the solution to this tragedy without needing to address or solve the problem of contaminated tobacco.
I believe that a community-based organic tobacco replacement program would turn out to be the most effective smoking-related disease mitigation approach ever implemented. But that’s for later. Just like a needle exchange. Turn in your contaminated tobacco products; receive organic smokes in return. The present cost would be a fraction of one percent of the future avoided costs, not to mention the avoided suffering and death.
The program can be a simple as buying organic cigarettes and distributing them, or as much fun as buying whole organic tobacco leaf and having rolling parties.
Hand-rolling parties using organic tobacco leaf would offer a great participatory opportunity for raising awareness and encouraging patients to help themselves and educate others.
These organic smokes can be handed out just like medications, needles, condoms, vitamins and other necessities; hand out the these uncontaminated hand-rolled cigarettes along with medication and do some awareness-raising of why this is so important. Then check the vitals on the patients who switch from contaminated to organic tobacco and check the results.
This has never been done before, and I can promise that the results will be dramatic when someone finally has the courage to try.
I realize that the perfect solution would be to find a way to empower victims to stop smoking completely, and this may actually be a path to that outcome for some. But for those who must for whatever reason keep smoking, at least they won’t be inhaling a cocktail of therapy-negating Azole fungicides and immune-system disruptors like Carbendazim and DDT.
Unfortunately this simple little program would threaten everybody from the tobacco companies to the FDA and the Prohibitionist/Eugenics interests among the Elite. This program, which can easily be implemented on the most local level, would actually eliminate most smoking-related disease and death and that would never do. Don’t for one minute think that the Elite are unaware that most of the people killed by contaminated tobacco products are by their definition not worth keeping alive. They are very aware, and think they are immensely clever for getting away with it for as long as they have.
For members of the LGBTQ communities who are currently smoking but do not have HIV/AIDS, this awareness could be a future life-saver. Seeing what their brothers and sisters are going through and knowing why will be a huge incentive for HIV/AIDS patients who have turned their therapy around by eliminating the fungicide-contaminated tobacco products can share that experience more effectively than any program ever designed.
I am the inventor of “American Spirit” organic tobacco and the writer of “Cultivators Handbook of Natural Tobacco” so I know the organic tobacco network pretty well. I’ll be happy to help any clinic access dependable low-cost supplies of any kind of organic tobacco from cigarettes to RYO to whole organic leaf.
I can also help set up a tobacco product pesticide/fungicide testing program using qualified US labs so that clinic and patients can know exactly what is in the specific tobacco brand that is threatening therapy.
So, thanks for staying with this post. You may be interested in some related posts, or maybe this has been way too much already, in which case thanks for visiting and reading!
Prostate Cancer & Tobacco Pesticides: Hidden Links
Ancestral DDT Exposure & Trans-generational Obesity
Obesity & Obesogens: The Tobacco Connection
Smoking & Breast Cancer – A New Link?
Little Cigars And High Liver Cancer Rates In Marginalized Communities
Sweet Cheap Poison At The Bodega
Summary
Hidden DDT contamination of tobacco products may be a missing link in the equation connecting the Korean Genome, Tobacco product smoking, and the emerging Type 2 Diabetes epidemic in Korea.
Background
First, we have data-based hard evidence from lab tests just completed (12/18) that the American tobacco supply appears to be heavily contaminated (see data below), and we are certain based on this and other data that this reflects the global tobacco supply situation.
There is also this:
1. Solid research (cited below) that shows that exposure during fetal development to specific organochlorine pesticides including DDT leads by now-known genetic pathways to increased risk, and increased rates of Type 2 Diabetes in people with the Korean genome.
2. The connection between smoking tobacco products and Type 2 Diabetes among Koreans (cited below) is also well established, but there is no cross-over understanding of the role of pesticides in smoking-related disease.
Without taking the hidden pesticides in tobacco products into account, the relationship between smoking and Diabetes cannot be fully understood, and the specific genetic vulnerabilities of Korean people cannot be accounted for in making health care decisions. With such knowledge, doctors would be better able to treat patients, and reluctant patients would have new evidence-based smoking quitting motivation showing them the specific pesticides in their specific tobacco product brand choice and what those pesticides are doing to their treatment outcome.
3. Other research (cited below) shows that the damaging effects of DDT exposure persist across multiple generations, and that people of Asian ancestry are disproportionately vulnerable to certain specific genetic damage from DDT exposure in previous generations.
Unfortunately the problem of DDT and Diabetes doesn’t stop with the person who is smoking contaminated tobacco today. It appears that even if a person today is not a smoker, and not being exposed to DDT that way, if their mother or maternal grandmother smoked she was undoubtedly exposed to DDT with every puff, and that effect is now known to reach across generations and put exposed people at higher risk of multiple diseases.
This strongly implies that Koreans with Type 2 Diabetes today whose mother’s mother smoked may have inherited the damaged genes that led to their diabetes from a grandmother whose DNA was attacked by the pesticides in her cigarettes 50 years ago.
4. It’s an open secret that Asian tobacco products are heavily contaminated with pesticide residues including DDT and other organochlorine pesticides. Asian health authorities have been struggling for years trying to find a way to stop the tobacco pesticide contamination but the industry has the fix in at every important political and regulatory level in every country including, I’m very sure, in Korea.
5. In this post I will offer links to peer-reviewed research and hard data to demonstrate that this is a possibility worth examining. These pesticides are known contaminants of tobacco products worldwide.
The Most Compelling Evidence
First, here’s new hard data showing the extent of pesticide contamination of American tobacco products. (Notice the multiple endocrine-disruptors.)
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
Here’s a startling study linking DDT to obesity and diabetes across generations of people, which given the history of smoking in Korea suggests a link to today’s Korean Diabetes epidemic among others.
BMC Medicine 2013 11:228
Background
Ancestral environmental exposures to a variety of environmental factors and toxicants have been shown to promote the epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of adult onset disease. The present work examined the potential transgenerational actions of the insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) on obesity and associated disease.
Conclusions
Observations indicate ancestral exposure to DDT can promote obesity and associated disease transgenerationally. The etiology of disease such as obesity may be in part due to environmentally induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance.
At least some portion of the Type 2 Diabetes epidemic among Korean smokers must be due to their genetic vulnerability to organochlorine pesticides like the DDT hidden in the tobacco products they are smoking.
In our recent tests of off-the-shelf American tobacco products for pesticide contamination, 20% of the samples tested revealed a high concentration of DDT. The following study looked at Koreans only but if this pattern is repeated or amplified among tobacco brands smoked by Asian populations, then smoking OC-contaminated tobacco products represents a hidden danger of increased risk for Type 2 Diabetes. This is due to the unreasonably dangerous exposure of smokers and their immediate households to OC pesticides in tobacco product smoke.
This research also has strong implications for Korean-American and in fact all Asian-American youth who disproportionately smoke the highly contaminated brands of tobacco products that are often the only choice available in marginalized Asian-American communities. Obviously Asian youth in America have Asian genomes, which means that they are at heightened risk of transgenerational pesticide-induced disease from smoking contaminated tobacco products.
Another Piece Of The Puzzle
We see that DDT damage crosses generations. Now let’s see what it specifically does to Koreans.
Environ Int. 2010 Jul;36(5):410-4.
Strong associations between low-dose organochlorine pesticides and type 2 diabetes in Korea.
Low-dose organochlorine (OC) pesticides have recently been associated with type 2 diabetes in several non-Asian general populations. As there is currently epidemic type 2 diabetes in Asia, we investigated the associations between OC pesticides and type 2 diabetes in Koreans.
Most OC pesticides showed strong associations with type 2 diabetes after adjusting for age, sex, BMI, alcohol consumption, and cigarette smoking.
In this exploratory study with small sample, low-dose background exposure to OC pesticides was strongly associated with prevalent type 2 diabetes in Koreans even though absolute concentrations of OC pesticides were no higher than in other populations. Asians may be more susceptible to adverse effects of OC pesticides than other races.
Notice that this study found the effects of OC pesticides even AFTER smoking was controlled as a factor, which means that the effects of the pesticide contaminants in the tobacco products were masked in the data, but would have spiked the results even more if shown.
Unfortunately multiple research studies show that older Koreans strongly tend to continue smoking after being diagnosed with Diabetes, which means that those smokers are continuing to reinforce the cause of their disease while being treated. I have to also wonder about the cross-interactions between all of the pesticides in what they are smoking and the medications that they are taking to treat the disease.
In other words, unknown to them or their doctors, smoking is continuing to expose them to the OC pesticides that caused their diabetes in the first place, which probably effectively cancels out any positive impact treatment may be having.
Smoking and Risk for Diabetes Incidence and Mortality in Korean Men and Women
Diabetes Care 2010 Dec; 33(12): 2567-2572.
Younger age, lower economic status, heavier smoking habit, lower Charlson Comorbidity Index and comorbid hypertension were identified as factors associated with continued smoking after the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes.
Older patients and patients with longer diabetic duration were more likely to quit smoking.
Contrastingly, smokers in the lower economic status and heavier smoking habit categories were more likely to continue smoking after the diagnosis.
Conclusion
The economic, social and personal cost burden that the 100% preventable OC pesticide contamination of tobacco products imposes on Asian countries may represent the difference between a viable healthy economy and society and a sickened, low-productivity, low energy society in Asia.
Given the rapidly advancing chemistry of pesticide agents and their increasing impact on the human endocrine system, Asian societies must control this devastating hidden and unregulated poisoning of their people by the international tobacco cartels.
As you can see in these related posts, this issue is by no means confined to people with Asian genomes, not to DDT, nor to Diabetes.
Sweet Cheap Poison At The Bodega
Obesity & Obesogens: The Tobacco Connection
Tobacco Pesticides & Childhood Leukemia
The data and research studies we’ll look at in this post offer evidence that many, many millions of people today who are suffering from obesity may have a problem that, for those with a specific kind of family history of smoking, is totally independent of their diet or other behavior. In other words they aren’t eating or doing anything that can completely explain their obesity, but they are suffering, getting sick and dying of it. They may not be able or choose to eat the best diet, and they may not be able to live in the healthiest environment, but do those factors explain what’s causing their obesity enough that we can say “case closed”?
The newest research (shown and linked-to below) says the case is far from closed. It is linked to hidden endocrine disrupting pesticides including heavy DDT in the tobacco products smoked by women in the 1955-1980 time period. And by the way, knowing that pesticide damage may have been done to your mother or grandmother by constant DDT exposure, and that you were exposed before and maybe after birth, may lead your doctors today toward thinking about new ways of helping you.
So this post and these ideas aren’t just about raining awareness of the terrible things that smoking did to mothers and grandmothers of today’s generations, it’s about how knowing what was done generations ago may, in these new days of genetic science, give us new options to repair the damage.
To begin with, we have a study that shows us, although that was not the researcher’s objective, that people suffering from obesity today had mothers or grandmothers who were exposed. Not exposed by smoking – nobody knew that or even admits it today. But because as we’ll see shortly cigarettes were loaded with DDT in the period 1955-1980, people struggling with obesity today may well be the victims of DDT in the cigarettes their mother or grandmother smoked in 1970. DDT is now classified along with a number other supertoxic pesticides as an Obesogen – a chemical compound that causes obesity with the right exposure. It was a hidden but heavy contaminant of the tobacco product supply in those days, along with other supertoxic organochlorines including Endrin, Aldrin, Dieldren, Heptachlor, and Chordane.
This means that that people born to mothers who smoked 1955-1980, or to mothers whose own mother smoked 1955-1980, are at higher risk of transgenerational obesity just from that factor, exposure to DDT in the womb, even without any further exposure. In utero DDT exposure at just the wrong point in the unfolding tissues of the fetus, causes specific DNA damage that extends well beyond obesity in the later life of the unborn child to include multiple kidney, prostate, testicular and ovarian diseases and several specific cancers including breast cancer and childhood leukemia.
Here is a data table from a confidential internal RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company that shows the levels of DDT contamination of their three most popular brands. Virtually any woman smoking an RJ Reynolds brand in those years, and earlier, was inhaling DDT at these levels. If she was pregnant, her child was exposed at precisely the right point to initiate the obesogenic process because even if she didn’t smoke every day of her pregnancy DDT lingers and accumulates in organs and fatty tissues. Her babies would have been exposed, and the transgenerational process initiated.
RJR Confidential June 21, 1972
Project 2358 – Cigarette Development; Notebook Pages: 250701-250719
| In The Cigarette | DDT – Range PPM (20 samples) | DDT – Avg PPM (20 Samples) |
| 4841 – Regular Unfiltered | 4.14 – 7.96 | 6.06 +/- 0.99 |
| 4842 – Filter King | 3.38 – 6.65 | 4.95 +/- 0.90 |
| 4843 – Filter King | 4.86 – 6.82 | 5.89 +/- 0.61 |
| In The Cigarette Smoke | ||
| 4841 – Regular Unfiltered | 0.35 – 0.57 | 0.42 +/- 0.06 |
| 4842 – Filter King | 0.16 – 0.35 | 0.025 +/- 0.05 |
| 4843 – Filter King | 0.24 – 0.46 | 0.35 +/- 0.05 |
I hope that this information can empower people suffering from obesity or any of the other diseases now associated with transgenerational effects of DDT exposure to seek alternative treatments and therapies that may help in ways not being addressed by Western Allopathic medicine as represented by the US FDA, which actively rejects responsibility for regulating pesticide contamination of tobacco products. FDA simply refuses to so so, and there can only be one reason for that. Only one.
BMC Medicine 2013 11:228
Background
Ancestral environmental exposures to a variety of environmental factors and toxicants have been shown to promote the epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of adult onset disease. The present work examined the potential transgenerational actions of the insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) on obesity and associated disease.
Conclusions
Observations indicate ancestral exposure to DDT can promote obesity and associated disease transgenerationally. The etiology of disease such as obesity may be in part due to environmentally induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance.
Here is direct evidence that smokers of at least brands of RJR cigarettes were exposed to DDT with each puff they took before, during and after pregnancy. I have a copy of the original report found in the Tobacco settlement files. Here are the important data.
RJR Confidential June 21, 1972
Project 2358 – Cigarette Development
Notebook Pages: 250701-250719
| In Cigarette | DDT – Range PPM (20 samples) | DDT – Avg PPM (20 Samples) |
| 4841 – Regular Unfiltered | 4.14 – 7.96 | 6.06 +/- 0.99 |
| 4842 – Filter King | 3.38 – 6.65 | 4.95 +/- 0.90 |
| 4843 – Filter King | 4.86 – 6.82 | 5.89 +/- 0.61 |
| In Cigarette Smoke | ||
| 4841 – Regular Unfiltered | 0.35 – 0.57 | 0.42 +/- 0.06 |
| 4842 – Filter King | 0.16 – 0.35 | 0.025 +/- 0.05 |
| 4843 – Filter King | 0.24 – 0.46 | 0.35 +/- 0.05 |
This level of contamination was universal in 1972, and included many other organochlorines that RJR didn’t test for – at least not in this report. But tobacco products in those days were heavily contaminated with the whole range of OC pesticides including Endrin, Aldrin, Dieldrin, Chlordane, and many others whose impact on human health have never been studied.
This also means that people who themselves smoke or use DDT contaminated tobacco products today are reinforcing the transgenerational effects of DDT exposure by their mother or grandmother. It’s also important to say that the tobacco products with the highest levels of DDT today are those being smoked by poor, marginalized Hispanic, African American and Native American youth.
Obesity is one of the known effects of current DDT exposure, so as long as this synergistic pathway goes unrecognized in our understanding of obesity the opportunities for successful healing will be unnecessarily limited. A good first step would be to remove all tobacco products contaminated by high levels of DDT from the market.
This study of transgenerational effects of exposure to DDT ought to provoke questions about what the tobacco manufacturers knew in 1972, or earlier, or afterwards about organochlorine pesticides in their products.
| Grams of Tobacco Consumed Per-Day In Selected Cannabis Growing States | |
| State | Retail Grams Tobacco Daily – All Brands |
| Oregon | 11,100,000 |
| California | 62,300,000 |
| Washington | 29,388,240 |
| Colorado | 13,937,280 |
| Nevada | 9.336,971 |
| Michigan | 31,567,585 |
| Tennessee | 21,007,048 |
| Massachusetts | 12,781,552 |
| billdrake4470@gmail.com | |
We’ve just finished testing off-the-shelf tobacco products from local mini-marts in Portland, Oregon and among the 20+ hidden, unregulated xenobiotic contaminants that we were able to identify (see below) we found extremely high concentrations of Carbendazim. This contamination occurred in a little cigar brand that is #1 in Latino communities and high in popularity in African-American, Native American and other marginalized & low-income communities where tobacco product choices are restricted to the cheapest, and now we know the most contaminated brands.
Carbendazim has been banned in the EU since 2014. It attacks and destroys the reproductive and immune systems of young people, particularly young Latinos, African-Americans, and Native Americans whose genetic materials are known to be more vulnerable to Carbendazim than youth of European ancestry. As you can see in the data, Carbendazim is only one many previously hidden, unregulated contaminants we found, each with it’s own health impact. But for the moment let’s focus just on the Carbendazim 0.843 mg/kg that’s being inhaled 20-40-60 times a day by @ 850,000 young people in the US right now today.
Carbendazim contamination disproportionately impacts marginalized young people who fall victim to tobacco products and who, because of poverty and carefully targeted marketing, have few choices available to them other than the cheapest and most contaminated brands. Please notice the relationship between price and contamination in the data below.
(from): Summary of Science Behind 2014 EU Ban on Carbendazim “Independent literature shows that the pesticide Carbendazim is a very dangerous toxin, capable of causing malformations in the foetus at very low doses and it’s still uncertain if a safe level exists at all. Carbendazim is also capable of disrupting chromosome unfolding, can cause infertility of men and cancer.”
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
As you can see, Carbendazim shows up in our first-ever data on pesticide contaminants of tobacco products (right hand column third row). This brand, Swisher Sweets, is #1 in popularity among young smokers, who are also right in the middle of their reproductive years. It is heavily marketed to youth, and is designed with sweet flavors and heavy social media advertising to be part of a cool lifestyle.
This means that these young people, in the middle of their reproductive years, are at the highest possible risk for suffering the known consequences of Carbendazim exposure. (And all the other pesticides you see there, each of which deserves it’s own discussion.) This is made more serious by the route of exposure, because inhalation exposure is far more toxic than eating or skin exposure, and the frequency, because smokers (and fetus and child) are exposed to the pesticides with every puff.
The bottom line is that 0.843 mg/kg is an extraordinary level of Carbendazim to find in any consumer product, but especially in an off-the-shelf tobacco product being marketed heavily to kids, considering that it has been totally banned in much of the world since 2014, is strictly regulated in the US, and is totally illegal on tobacco. Imagine the response of health authorities if this were found on school lunches, slurpees at the 7/11, beer at the mini-mart or granola at Whole Foods?
The problem isn’t just that the Carbendazim is present. For there to be that much Carbendazim residue, it had to have been sprayed on the tobacco deliberately, heavily and recently. There is full knowledge of the EU ban, and the reasons for it. All tobacco manufacturers have notified by their own scientific authority CORESTA. The manufacturers know, or have every reason to know, that they are committing serious race-based crimes against humanity. I can only assume that they have been at this for so long that they actually don’t realize what they are doing to so many people.
Here are just a few of the peer-reviewed research data links that throw light on this hidden relationship
1. Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2014 Aug;69(3):476-86. Reproductive and possible hormonal effects of carbendazim.
“The literature review indicates that CBZ induces reproductive and developmental toxicity through alteration of many key events which are important to spermatogenesis. It seems that this fungicide may influence the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonad axis in addition to being a testicular toxicant.”
“2,5-Hexanedione (2,5-HD), a taxol-like promoter of microtubule assembly, and carbendazim (CBZ), a colchicine-like inhibitor of microtubule assembly, are two environmental testicular toxicants that target and disrupt microtubule function in Sertoli cells.”
3. Toxicol Ind Health. 2014 Apr;30(3):259-67. Carbendazim-induced testicular damage and oxidative stress in albino rats: ameliorative effect of licorice aqueous extract
“Administration of carbendazim induced significant decrease in testis weight, diameter, and germinal epithelial height of the seminiferous tubules. Histological results revealed degeneration of seminiferous tubules, loss of spermatogenic cells, and apoptosis. Moreover, carbendazim caused elevation of testicular malondialdehyde (MDA), marker of lipid peroxidation, and reduced the activity of the antioxidant enzymes, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT).”
And the issue isn’t just Carbendazim as you can see looking back in the data. Most of the individual contaminants are concerning by themselves, but they are additive and synergistic in effect and their impact on human health in that regard is absolutely unknown. What is known now, and IMO it ought to be enough, is that young smokers are inhaling a toxic cocktail of chemicals each designed to operate in different ways at the nano-level to disrupt basic life processes. The dosage of the most advanced pesticides doesn’t matter – they don’t need a “critical mass” to work. A couple of molecules, well below the level of detection, is enough for them to do what they were designed to do to the reproductive systems and genetic materials of bugs, and human teens are simply unfortunate collateral damage in the tobacco industry’s search for increased profits through chemistry.
There doesn’t seem to be any question about the connection between pesticide exposure of agricultural workers and prostate cancer. We know that this kind of exposure leads to prostate cancer, and we know which pesticides are the causal agents.
Through new research that we have just completed, we can also now identify specific pesticides that are known to cause prostate cancer that contaminate specific tobacco products. This means that a whole new connection between smoking and prostate cancer starts to emerge.
We can see that specific pesticide contaminants of tobacco products are the same pesticides that have been shown to cause prostate cancer in exposed farm workers. (I discuss farm worker exposure vs smoker exposure below.)
Check out this data from lab tests we’ve just finished running on off-the-shelf tobacco products. Notice the totally illegal and banned worldwide DDT. Notice all the Azole fungicides like Penconazole. Check that amazing concentration of Cypermethrin. But really, with 0.816 mg/kg of DDT in every puff, all day every day, what other direct linkages to prostate cancer would you need? How about that 0.843 mg/kg of Carbenzadim, banned in the EU since 2014.
We are sadly confident that the entire tobacco product supply in the US will prove to be similarly heavily contaminated. We plan to test as many brands as possible as soon as funding becomes available. But here’s what we’ve found so far.
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
Farm workers are exposed heavily to known prostate carcinogens regularly during certain parts of the year, whereas smokers of the brands shown above are inhaling known prostate carcinogens 50-100 times a day and more, year-round. So we are looking at two kinds of exposure – heavy during the season for farm workers, and low-level 7/365 for smokers. Intermittent mid-level exposure vs chronic low-level exposure. Also the farm workers are being exposed to one chemical at a time where the smoker is getting a toxic cocktail. Then of course there are farm workers who smoke the cheap tobacco brands like little cigars because that’s all they can afford. Double or triple whammy there.
One thing that needs special attention with this new connection is the clear evidence that a smoker with prostate cancer risks that cancer turning very aggressive if it feeds on DDT and other endocrine-disrupting pesticides, which we can now show are just what that aggressive cancer is getting with every puff. Doctors see this happen in relapsing patients and know that it’s connected with their smoking but can’t explain why it’s happening.
Here’s the message: If you stop feeding that thing in your prostate the chemicals that turn it aggressive maybe it will calm down and maybe you and the docs can get it under control.
So, here are a few key references. There are plenty more – it just depends on how much convincing anyone needs.
Rev Environ Health. 2016 Sep 1;31(3):311-27
Exposure to pesticides and prostate cancer: systematic review of the literature.
Results: The review included 49 studies published between 1993 and 2015. All studies were in English and analyzed exposure to pesticides and/or agricultural activities. Most studies (32 articles) found a positive association between prostate cancer and pesticides or agricultural occupations, with estimates ranging from 1.01 to 14.10.
So, what if tobacco products were loaded with pesticides but nobody knew about that contamination, so even though they knew there was a link between smoking and prostate cancer they didn’t know why? Would that show up in smoking & prostate cancer studies? Well, it seems that it might.
Eur Urol Focus. 2015 Aug;1(1):28-38.
Smoking and Prostate Cancer: A Systematic Review
CONCLUSIONS:
Data from the peer-reviewed literature suggested an association of smoking and aggressive PCa. Although the pathophysiology underlying this association remains unclear, smokers presented higher PCa mortality and worse outcome after treatment. Smoking-cessation counseling should be implemented for patients with PCa, although its effect on PCa progression should be investigated.
OK, but how do we know that the pesticides in tobacco products have anything to do with prostate cancer? Well, first, pesticides used in tobacco are heavily used throughout agriculture. Second, we know that at least two of the contaminants of the little cigar we tested are potent human carcinogens and one acts specifically on human testicles. Now your testicles aren’t your prostate, but that’s getting close enough to merit a second glance if you’re a smoker, don’t you think?
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Carbendazim#section=GHS-Classification
“Carbendazim is a broad-spectrum benzimidazole antifungal with potential antimitotic and antineoplastic activities. Although the exact mechanism of action is unclear, carbendazim appears to binds to an unspecified site on tubulin and suppresses microtubule assembly dynamic. This results in cell cycle arrest at the G2/M phase and an induction of apoptosis.”
Oh, and that other carcinogen – the one that directly impacts your prostate?
Chemico-Biological Interactions
Volume 230, 25 March 2015, Pages 40-49
p,p′-Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (p,p′-DDT) and p,p′-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (p,p′-DDE) repress prostate specific antigen levels in human prostate cancer cell lines
“Thus, we conclude that men who have been exposed to either DDT or DDE may produce a false-negative PSA test when screening for prostate cancer, resulting in an inaccurate clinical diagnosis. More importantly, prolonged exposure to these anti-androgens may mimic androgen ablation therapy in individuals with prostate cancer, thus exacerbating the condition by inadvertently forcing adaptation to this stress early in the disease.”
These are farmers, not smokers, but their prostate didn’t like the DDT exposure and neither will the prostate of anyone who inhales pesticide-contaminated tobacco product smoke (or vapor).
Prostate. 2011 Feb 1;71(2):168-83.
Prostate cancer risk and exposure to pesticides in British Columbia farmers.
“The significant association between prostate cancer risk and exposure to DDT (OR = 1.68; 95% CI: 1.04-2.70 for high exposure), simazine (OR = 1.89; 95% CI: 1.08-3.33 for high exposure), and lindane (OR = 2.02; 95% CI: 1.15-3.55 for high exposure) is in keeping with those previously reported in the literature.
If you keep smoking things just get worse; if you quit after 10 years the risk disappears. But if you are going to keep smoking at least pay attention to the pesticides that you’re inhaling and choose the least contaminated brand possible.
European Urology, December 2015, Volume 68, Issue 6, Pages 949–956
Association of Cigarette Smoking and Smoking Cessation with Biochemical Recurrence of Prostate Cancer in Patients Treated with Radical Prostatectomy
We investigated the effect of smoking on the risk of prostate cancer recurrence in patients with treated with surgery. We found that former smokers and current smokers were at higher risk of cancer recurrence compared to patients who never smoked; the detrimental effect of smoking was mitigated after 10 yr or more of smoking cessation.
I’m not writing this post as a science paper – I’m writing it to point out a connection that is as obvious as it is hidden, and hoping that the message will reach people who can benefit. The message to smokers is that if you are going to smoke, pay close attention to the contaminants in your brand and stop feeding your cancer with banned pesticides. I know this is heresy but – if you’re going to keep smoking than at least smoke American Spirit organic tobacco. Fair disclosure – I invented American Spirit but lost the company to the tobacco industry not long after we started and I have absolutely no connection of any kind to the company. I don’t benefit in any way from anyone choosing American Spirit. Well, actually, the benefit I get is the only one I want, which is knowing that I may have made a contribution to the health and happiness of another person.
