Hello! This blog post is now part of my newly published ebook “Smoke No Evil“, which is published on Amazon but its available free for the asking to visitors like you – see below.
I here’s nothing wrong with smoking Tobacco. It’s as safe as wine, beer, or cheeseburgers. It’s the Tobacco Cartel’s products that sicken and kill. “Smoking-related Death” has nothing to do with Tobacco. Many people understand the truth, but don’t know the whole story.
Just click here to request your free review copy of “Smoke No Evil”. After you read it, I hope that you’ll add your voice to those demanding investigation and accountability for the Tobacco Cartel. My hope is also that the knowledge in this book can be life-changing for smokers who are trapped in addiction to commercial Tobacco Cartel products, and life-affirming for those who already understand and smoke or vape only organic tobacco whenever possible.
Whether you smoke, vape, or chew tobacco this book destroys the myth that tobacco is going to harm you. Using data and hard evidence, this book proves that it’s not tobacco killing millions of smokers every year, and it never has been. You’ll see how the “science” used to prove that Tobacco is a killer is pure fraud and deception on the part of the Tobacco Cartel, and pure hypocrisy on the part of regulators and anti-tobacco propagandists.
My hope is that the knowledge here can be life-changing for smokers who are trapped in addiction to commercial Tobacco Cartel products, particularly people who are members of oppressed minority communities where the damage from pesticides in cheap tobacco products is magnified by genetic vulnerability.
Hello! This blog post is now part of my newly published ebook “Smoke No Evil“, which is published on Amazon but its available free for the asking to visitors like you – see below.
I here’s nothing wrong with smoking Tobacco. It’s as safe as wine, beer, or cheeseburgers. It’s the Tobacco Cartel’s products that sicken and kill. “Smoking-related Death” has nothing to do with Tobacco. Many people understand the truth, but don’t know the whole story.
Just click here to request your free review copy of “Smoke No Evil”. After you read it, I hope that you’ll add your voice to those demanding investigation and accountability for the Tobacco Cartel. My hope is also that the knowledge in this book can be life-changing for smokers who are trapped in addiction to commercial Tobacco Cartel products, and life-affirming for those who already understand and smoke or vape only organic tobacco whenever possible.
Whether you smoke, vape, or chew tobacco this book destroys the myth that tobacco is going to harm you. Using data and hard evidence, this book proves that it’s not tobacco killing millions of smokers every year, and it never has been. You’ll see how the “science” used to prove that Tobacco is a killer is pure fraud and deception on the part of the Tobacco Cartel, and pure hypocrisy on the part of regulators and anti-tobacco propagandists.
My hope is that the knowledge here can be life-changing for smokers who are trapped in addiction to commercial Tobacco Cartel products, particularly people who are members of oppressed minority communities where the damage from pesticides in cheap tobacco products is magnified by genetic vulnerability.
We laugh at the silly idea of Cannabis as a “killer weed” now, but millions believed it and happily allowed the government to send generations of people to prison because they believed it. It seems absurd that anyone would be fooled by that ham-handed government propaganda, but millions were and many still are.
Keeping mind that what has happened in the past could happen again, and could be happening right now, let me ask you to consider this:
What if there is a much more subtle and sophisticated generations-long campaign of disinformation about Tobacco just like there was about Cannabis? What if it’s run by a powerful industry with endless money and not by a bunch of clueless bureaucrats thinking up stupid slogans. What if the motive is a combination of profit and fear – immense profit from what they’re secretly doing, and deep fear of the liability if what they’re doing is revealed? What if the Tobacco industry has known for a long time that it has a severe, possibly fatal problem that it has managed to keep completely out of public view by spending vast sums of money on a combination of public persuasion and widespread, carefully targeted (but increasingly visible) official, scientific and medical corruption?
What if some or even most of the damage being caused in the modern world by commercial Tobacco products is not being caused by the Tobacco in those products but by previously unidentified hazardous toxic substances IN the tobacco products, and what if that means that these hazardous toxic substances in tobacco products can be controlled at the local level using existing local and state ordinances and laws? The hazardous substances in question are pesticides that are highly regulated and even banned in every other kind of product that people consume but – unbelievably – they are not regulated or inspected for in tobacco products. They are allowed by default by EPA, FDA, USDA, CDC, FTC, CPSC, and every other Federal agency. The Tobacco Cartel has controlled them all since the 1970s when all government research on pesticides in tobacco products ceased forever. You have never heard a word about pesticides in tobacco products, for all the Billions spent on “smoking and health” and “anti-smoking” and “anti-tobacco” programs and campaigns. That’s because there actually is a conspiracy, and its in plain sight – the very best place to totally conceal something.
I know that’s it’s a heresy to talk about controlling toxic substances in the tobacco products instead of the tobacco products themselves, but fair-minded people will consider the actual evidence and not rest on an unquestioned assumption: maybe it’s not the tobacco in the tobacco products that’s killing most of the people. It’s really no different that realizing that it’s better for addicts to inject drugs with clean needles and then make them available. You may not like the fact that people are smoking tobacco, but at least you can ensure that the manufacturers aren’t allowed to harm and exploit them with negligence and greed.
A Quick Review Of Some Hard Evidence
Here are a few of my posts with hard data on cigarette pesticides revealed by lab tests I commissioned in 2018 and with links to peer-reviewed research demonstrating the depth of the health hazards presented by these hidden contaminants.
After you have a chance to check out this set of links I would like to return to the topic of this post – what communities can do without “help’ from Federal bureaucrats to protect themselves from this public health threat.
This post links hard data on DDT in Swisher Sweets brand of little cigars, smokers by millions of young women, with peer-reviewed publushed research on pre-natal genetic damage to the baby
This post links hard data on hidden fungicides in tobacco brands popular in marginalized communities with peer-reviewed published research that demonstrates that exposure to these same fungicides is strongly associated with testicular cancer
This post offers hard evidence and historic documentation of the conspiratorial role of Federal agencies in concealing the health threat to smokers created by unregulated pesticide exposure
Any exposure to several of the pesticides shown to contaminate tobacco products are proven to have greater impact on babies with Latinx, African American, American Indian and Pacific Island genetics.
Could the unexplained link between smoking and suicide could be explained by the known link between pesticide exposure and suicide, once you become aware of the heavy concealed pesticide contamination in cigarettes?
A radical “quit smoking” plan that will probably offend a lot of non-smokers but that could help a lot of Diabetic smokers quit hurting themselves without having to quit.
This post examines the evidence of the link between mother’s exposure to DDT (like in Swisher Sweets) and their daughter’s lifetime risk of breast cancer. It’s huge.
The very foundation of the anti-tobacco, anti-smoking faith is that “Tobacco Is Bad Shit”. That’s the firm, unquestioning belief, and every tobacco prevention and control effort in the world is pinned to that article of faith. Tobacco causes illness and death. End of discussion. No questions. Full stop. We already know that Tobacco is bad shit, and we don’t want to hear any more about it. So let’s just move on and figure out how we can keep people from smoking and now vaping the goddamned stuff!
OK, but what if everybody is wrong? Really – what if everyone thinks things are one way, when they are actually another? Is that possible? What if people are all looking in one direction while the answer lies in another? Has there ever been that kind of mass delusion in history? Of course there has been – that’s a central theme in the history of science. People believe something fundamental for generations. It’s obviously wrong, but nobody can see it. The first one who points this out is attacked. Others speak up and say wait a minute, we should check this out and see if it’s true. They do, and it is. And then everybody says “Whocoulddaknowed?”
The oldest example of “everybody knows” is the flat earth delusion that ruled western minds for centuries. Maps showed the edges of the earth. Then one day – Oops! It’s round. Whocoulddaknowed? Then next the all-powerful church decided to burn heretics who pointed out simple, hard evidence that the world rotated rather than the heavens turning. Everyone knew that the earth was the center of the universe and that everything in God’s heavens rotated around God’s earth. Then one day – Oops! Whocoulddaknowed? It took the church centuries to apologize to Galileo. I doubt he cared. Then everyone laughed at the idea of invisible bugs causing disease because everyone knows it’s the vapors. Mal Aria. Oops! Again. Really? Whocoulddaknowed? Little invisible bugs. Well I’ll be damned.
Most of us scoff at that kind of profound ignorance as if we were invulnerable to the same folly. But I’m telling anyone who will listen – it’s not the tobacco that is sickening and killing millions. It turns.
I realize that tying those profound historical delusions to a delusion about Tobacco, even if it could be demonstrated, may seem trivial in comparison, but if anything the effect of the delusion about Tobacco has had greater impact on human life than any of those mass delusions just cited. That’s because of our profound collective delusions about tobacco, carefully cultivated by the tobacco industry to shield itself from accountability, have allowed millions of completely preventable deaths in the past and the dying will continue long into the future because of our willful collective ignorance.
The last words attributed to Jesus were “Father forgive them. They know not what they do.” I have always believed that Jesus was using those last words not to comment for all eternity on those who were killing him, and the evil Romans in general, but on the one thing most responsible for the suffering and death of mankind.
So, I’ll ask again, what if most of the damage being caused by Tobacco products is actually being caused by pesticide residues that contaminate the Tobacco products? The tobacco products, the manufactured crap, not tobacco itself. What if smoking tobacco, just tobacco, no contaminants, is OK? Gasp.
Here’s the thing. We know for sure that pesticide chemicals do exactly what they’re designed to do. They interrupt nerve transmissions, they destroy DNA, they poison internal organs, they mutate little bug babies – these chemical industry scientists, working dead-center in the traditions of the Nazi nerve gas experiments, are endlessly creative. So in the end, it really doesn’t matter whether tobacco is bad or not – we know that pesticides are “bad” for sure. They are “xenobiotics” – substances “hostile to life”. But so many people are so tied up arguing the evils of Tobacco so passionately and hatefully that they don’t see themselves as precise parallels with the Middle Ages “angels on the head of a pin” debate that consumed generations of “wise men”, while the Tobacco companies, like the wealthy classes that actually ran the Medieval Church for their own benefit, are snickering all the way to the bank.
All this may sound depressingly true and impossible to overcome, but not so. There are laws in place in every community to deal with pesticides as toxic substances, although those laws have been rigged by the pesticide manufacturers to cover what they thought was every contingency. Nothing in the Tobacco Master Settlement, or in any other shields the Cartel has erected, can protect them from liability for concealing their longstanding material knowledge of a clear, present danger to smokers and their children.
That’s the beauty of understanding that there are xenobiotic substances ON the tobacco products. It doesn’t matter what you think about tobacco itself, or even what laws and ordinances and regulations say about “tobacco” itself. Hate it or love it – doesn’t matter. These are products, and they are contaminated with known toxic and dangerous substances, and they violate all kinds of laws on that basis. If you love Tobacco, you should care. If you hate Tobacco, you should care. Pesticide-free tobacco products would be a major improvement in the life of a community regardless.
So there really doesn’t have to be any argument at all about whether or not tobacco is bad and should be controlled – some of the pesticides on the tobacco products being sold in your community are flat illegal and there are available legal remedies that the law says MUST be applied. Take that to the bank – and to your health department. and don’t let them stonewall you about “lack of authority to regulate tobacco products” – they have the authority and the duty to protect the public from pesticide exposure. They have never used it before this way, and they probably haven’t ever thought about it, but if a barrel of Cypermethrin suddenly falls from the sky into the WalMart parking lot you can bet they won’t be sitting around wondering who is going to handle it. If somebody lets loose a can of DDT in a schoolyard you can bet that the local authorities aren’t going to just call the poison hotline and then wait around. Communities can act when they are in immediate peril, and high concentrations of banned pesticide residues in tobacco products being smoked by children in the community meets that definition in spades.
Pesticides fall into a class of chemicals defined as “toxic substances” in a wide range of environmental and consumer protection regulations and statutes. In every state, there are statutes that empower local, county-level health officials to act when toxic substances threaten local public health. Yes there are pre-emption laws that forbid local communities from imposing greater restrictions on pesticides than state laws do, but in this case we’re talking about local communities using existing state laws on toxic substances in consumer products that, if detected at the any level, can trigger local action by public health authorities without waiting for permission from the state. This strategy may need tweaking in many communities, but because state and federal lawmakers have been incredibly (and perhaps in some cases deliberately) sloppy in writing tobacco product regulations I believe that tobacco product pesticide contamination opens a big wide door for local control.
In Oregon where I live, the credible allegation of the presence of banned “toxic substances” on any property located in the community is supposed to trigger mandatory regulatory responses if the allegation is properly made and supported by evidence. “Property” includes tobacco products sitting on the shelf down at the mini-mart. I’m currently working on educating our local public health administrator on her authority to act in this area.
In most jurisdictions I’ve looked at in California, Colorado, and other Cannabis-legal states, a broad range of “Property” is subject to “toxic substance” regulatory oversight by County public health authorities.
I can hear the screams from the faithful now – but, but Tobacco is so bad that it doesn’t matter if there’s poison on the leaves! I would only ask the faithful – can you point to one scientific research study that compares the smoke or vapor of 100% pure, organic Tobacco with any Tobacco product on the market? There are none. Zero. And, that’s not one of those famous “distinctions without a difference”. Please think about that – if actual, real Tobacco smoke or vapor has never been tested, and if every report of toxic substances in “tobacco” smoke has been based on rigged “reference cigarettes” supplied by the industry itself, where does that leave the idea that, without any question, Tobacco is horrible, awful, dangerous stuff? It may be true, but there are no studies that prove it one way or another.
Since 1970 virtually every “scientific” study of tobacco products has used industry-supplied “reference cigarettes” that don’t give results relevant to either what is really on the commercial market or to organic or even simply leaf tobacco. At least 25% of those “reference cigarettes” are “reconstituted tobacco”, a synthetic product made from a highly variable mix of tobacco stems, stalks and factory-floor waste called “tobacco dust”. There is no way that the results of smoke stream or vapor stream analysis using “reference cigarettes” has anything to do with tobacco in pure form. I know that anti-tobacco advocates would fear that the results of such testing might clear Tobacco’s name and give people who like to smoke and vape a license to do so. But so what?
I would say to them, if it turns out that it isn’t the Tobacco but the pesticides, since the pesticides are a very controllable harm while people smoking and vaping are not controllable, then forget about your dislike of Tobacco and deal with the problem. Or , I would also ask them, do you secretly agree with that renegade government bureaucrat in the 1920’s who arranged to have bootleg whiskey poisoned with methanol in order to scare people into not drinking? Do you think, I would ask, that this was actually a pretty good idea and those drinkers deserved what they got? Or maybe you aren’t that cold-hearted and simply think that alcohol is so bad anyway, and those drinkers were poisoning themselves anyway, so what’s the big deal?
I would ask them these questions because any person who felt so strongly about alcohol that they would ignore the deliberate poisoning of drinkers by the government wouldn’t be worried about a few pesticides in Tobacco products. By the same reasoning, Tobacco is so bad anyway – who cares about pesticides?
Think that an example from the 1920’s, a hundred years ago, is a bit irrelevant to today’s enlightened government? Well, remember Paraquat on Marijuana? The DEA came right out and said that regardless of what it did to Marijuana smokers, they were engaged in illegal activity and so it didn’t matter. Besides, from the government’s point of view, a few dead hippies weren’t worth getting worked up over. The idea that was sold to the public is clearly that Marijuana is so bad anyway who cares if the government poisons it – after all, they’re just trying to keep precious little American children from being lured into a life of degradation and crime.
Workers apply fungicide “Ditio carbamato” to cigar tobacco in Nicaragua every 4 days
So what I’m saying is that the only fair and reasonable way to determine the truth, the relative degree of actual risk, would be to compare (1) commercial tobacco products with (2) organic tobacco smoke and vapor. Otherwise all that science on smoking, and all those horrible components of “tobacco” smoke and vapor, aren’t actually testing “tobacco” smoke or vapor at all. They are testing “Tobacco product” vapor and smoke, and most Tobacco products in America have no relationship to real Tobacco leaf. Again, a distinction with a big difference.
One more heretical question, if you’re with me so far. What if those toxic substances are in Tobacco products for one reason only – because it is more profitable for Tobacco product manufacturers to use these chemicals in Tobacco production than to produce Tobacco without them? Almost as an aside, premium cigars are among the most severely contaminated Tobacco products in the world, because the growers spare no expense in applying pesticides, fungicides and every other kind of chemical to keep bugs and worms
from eating holes in those incredibly valuable cigar wrapper leaves. And why do they do that? Simple, again. It’s the money. A Tobacco leaf with bug holes can’t be used for making premium cigars, so once a bug takes a bite that leaf turns from gold into plain old shit.
Tobacco products aren’t contaminated with pesticide residues because the growers and manufacturers want to poison their customers; they’re contaminated because everybody makes more money by using these chemicals and they aren’t being forced to clean up their products, so millions of people are dying just like the bugs and worms in the Tobacco fields. It’s really that simple.
The Tobacco industry has produced organic Tobacco products, with no pesticide residue contamination. It knows how. It simply chooses not to. That cost/benefit decision alone impoverishes and drives the loss of millions of lives every year with immeasurable suffering and grief.
Pretty damned grim, right? Well, maybe not.
All it took to bring down Al Capone was one little charge of income tax evasion, and he wasn’t nearly the magnitude of monster these Tobacco companies are. Al thought he was riding pretty high too. Fancy suits. Expensive wine. Hookers. Blow. The best of everything. But he overlooked that one little crime, and that was enough.
Who in your County public health structure has the regulatory authority to order inspection of commercial products that are credibly suspected of being contaminated with the residues of banned pesticides?
Insist that they forget you are talking about Tobacco products.
Ask them what their action would be if you were coming to them with evidence that imported scented candles, or air fresheners, or incense being sold in your community were contaminated with these same pesticides at these same levels?
Geiss, O., Kotzias, D. – Determination of Ammonium, Urea and Pesticide Residues in Cigarette Tobacco. Fresenius Environmental Bulletin (FEB), No. 12 (2003), 1562– 1565
What would they do if they knew that children in the community were going to be inhaling vapors of Endosulfan, 4,4-DDE and Heptachlor over 100 times a day in homes where adults burned these candles?
How about if the issue was air fresheners contaminated with those same nerve toxins? Or maybe incense from China or India full of Chlordane?
What would they do if Tobacco products at the local mini-mart had the same contaminants as the cigarettes on the list you see here.
Oh, and about this cigarette pesticide data being from 2003? See my recent blog post with the Tobacco industry’s own data that shows these same pesticides – and about 100 more – still present on Tobacco worldwide in 2018. Show that data to your county public health department too.
If these two little bits of “income tax evasion” evidence aren’t enough to give your County public health officer “reasonable cause” to order inspection of commercial Tobacco products being sold in your County, let me know.
I’m doing some Tobacco product testing right now (12/18) in three of Oregon’s premier testing labs, and I plan to make the results available as part of a community-level Tobacco product control program.
Local communities have deferred too long to State and federal bureaucrats to protect them from Tobacco products. Simple residue testing of commercial tobacco products being sold in your community will give you ample evidence to insist that your local public health officials use their existing authority to enforce toxic substances regulations against contaminated Tobacco products for sale in your community.
If your community doesn’t have existing qualified pesticide residue testing labs, and most don’t, get in touch and ask for no-cost assistance from the Oregon Community Tobacco Control Partnership.
This is a comment that I’ve just submitted to the FDA asking them to enforce their own regulations and conduct appropriate testing, which has not been done to date, to determine whether all current IQOS applications are in compliance with regard to pesticide residues as required by this rule, and then to determine the impact of any discovered pesticide residues on the manufacturer’s many and deceptive “Modified Risk” claims.
You can support a moveon petition to Congress demanding that FDA investigate by clicking on the cute little hummingbird choking on clouds of vaporized pesticides.
(B) ADDITIONAL SPECIAL RULE.—Beginning 2 years after the date of enactment of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, a tobacco product manufacturer shall not use tobacco, including foreign grown tobacco, that contains a pesticide chemical residue that is at a level greater than is specified by any tolerance applicable under Federal law to domestically grown tobacco.
FDA Comment Submission
I am concerned that
The presence of pesticide residues in the Tobacco component of IQOS has not been discussed or referenced in any of Philip Morris’s FDA multiple IQOS applications.
While the IQOS applications offer extensively documented comparisons between toxic substances in the IQOS vapor stream and toxic substances in the smoke stream of combusted Tobacco (reference Cigarettes only, not commercial cigarettes), after performing a keyword search through the submitted IQOS documentation I can find no mention of any comparison of pesticide residues in the IQOS vapor stream with those in a reference cigarette smoke stream in support of the IQOS claim of “modified risk”.
The public record does not show that FDA has yet requested that Philip Morris demonstrate compliance with Special Rule 907(a)(1)(B) with regard to any of its IQOS applications.
To grant any application related to IQOS without first establishing that IQOS can and will comply with Special Rule 907(a)(1)(B) would seriously jeopardize public health in that without demonstrated compliance and published results, the public will not have an opportunity to make a fair and complete comparison of the relative risks the pesticide residue contaminants of the IQOS product vs combustible Tobacco products.
To grant any application related to IQOS that claims “harm reduction” without first comparing the relative harm of inhaling the intact pesticide burden in the IQOS vapor stream to the harm of inhaling the partially combusted, altered and degraded pesticides in a conventional Tobacco smoke stream, would not serve the public’s interest in having full and fair disclosure of all relevant risks associated with the use of IQOS.
Discussion
Because the Tobacco materials, along with any pesticide residues, in the Tobacco component of IQOS will be vaporized well below the point of pyrolytic degradation, and none of any pesticide residues contained in the Tobacco component will be destroyed by combustion, therefore it is reasonable to project that a greater proportion of the original pesticide residue burden on the Tobacco component of IQOS will survive and retain bioactivity in the vapor stream compared with the proportion of surviving and bioactive pesticide residues in a smoke stream that would be generated by combusting that same Tobacco component; and
Because in making its case for “modified risk” Philip Morris, by comparing the toxicant properties of an IQOS vapor stream with the toxicant properties of a Reference Cigarette smoke stream, either by oversight or by design fails to address the differences in potential for harm between (1) delivery of the full original pesticide residue burden in the IQOS vapor stream compared with (2) delivery of a reduced portion of the original pesticide residue burden, of which a portion has been destroyed by combustion, and some or all of the remainder of which has been dry-distilled into altered compounds and/or partially degraded by pyrolytic processes; and,
Because Special Rule 907(a)(1)(B) requires that manufacturers “shall not use” tobacco of any origin containing pesticide residues “at a greater level” than “any tolerance” specified under Federal law; and
Because in addition to pesticides registered for use on Tobacco with established tolerance levels, Federal law also specifies certain pesticides that are banned for use on Tobacco; in the context of US Special Rule 907(a)(1)(B) this requires that manufacturers shall not use any Tobacco containing those banned pesticides “at a greater level” than zero; and
Because current Tobacco industry documentation shows that certain pesticides not registered for use on Tobacco in the United States are present in the world Tobacco supply, and certain pesticides banned in the US are also present in the world Tobacco supply (https://www.coresta.org/agrochemical-guidance-residue-levels-grls-29205.html ); and
Because Philip Morris is a large importer of Tobacco stem and waste materials from Brazil, a Tobacco exporter with documented heavy use of pesticides on Tobacco crops; (https://www.zauba.com/Buyers-of-tobacco-stems) and
Because imported Brazilian Tobacco stems and waste that are likely to be contaminated with pesticides residues, some of which may violate the “greater level” condition of Special Rule 907(a)(1)(B), are used in large quantities (millions of kilograms/year) by Philip Morris in its Tobacco product manufacturing in the US and are therefore, in the absence of any statement by the manufacturer to the contrary, likely used in its IQOS manufacturing processes; however, without testing for the presence and concentration of pesticide residues in the IQOS Tobacco component there can be no demonstration of IQOS compliance with Special Rule 907(a)(1)(B) regarding any such “imported tobacco”; and
Because Brazilian Tobacco pesticide use includes the documented use of pesticides for which US EPA and USDA have established that there are no safe levels, and that are either not registered or banned for use on Tobacco in the US ( https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2018/7017423/); therefore,
I am requesting that FDA suspend further consideration of the Philip Morris MRTP application, and any other Philip Morris application that can result in approval by the FDA for sale of IQOS in the US, until the issues I raise here are addressed under the FDA’s 907(a)(1)(B) authority and any other applicable enabling authorities.
If you want a new way to control the damage that Tobacco products do to your community, then this may interest you.
This post offers credible tobacco industry data showing all of the pesticides that contaminate Tobacco products worldwide. It is published by CORESTA, the tobacco industry’s captive science & research institute. This information alone can empower local initiatives by offering credible evidence that banned toxic substances may be contaminating locally-sold Tobacco products.
If your local health department has regulations that allow it to investigate whether a product being sold in your community is contaminated with banned pesticide residues, then this list will give them probable cause to sample locally-sold Tobacco products and test for the presence of banned pesticide chemicals.
It is important for you to keep in mind, when making such a request, that (1) it doesn’t matter that the products are Tobacco – they are just like pesticide contaminated candles, air fresheners or incense – and (2) these contaminants are present because of negligence by the manufacturer and lack of regulatory oversight by any superior authority, so the local authorities have to act in the interest of public health and safety.
So this is it – the official (but highly confidential) June, 2018 tobacco industry guide to the pesticide chemicals used on tobacco worldwide. It’s an industry list cautioning manufacturers to ‘watch out’ for these chemicals that remain on Tobacco from the fields, which means that it’s a list of what the industry knows is potentially present in any Tobacco product anywhere.
Many of these pesticides are damaging to human health at very low levels of chronic exposure – just like a smoker gets 100-200 times a day, 365 days a year puffing away and inhaling the pesticide residues invisibly contaminating the tobacco in their cigarette. (Except that it isn’t really tobacco, but that’s another post.)
But the really severe public health threat created by pesticides on Tobacco lies in the industry’s attempt to pivot toward vaporizing. Imagine that instead of being at least partially destroyed by combustion and smoking, all those pesticides are now being gently vaporized and delivered full-strength to your lungs as IQOS Tobacco vapor.
While the tobacco industry publishes pesticide standards for its members, it makes clear that nobody actually has to follow this industry guidance. The tobacco companies are safe from accountability because there is no testing of commercial cigarettes in the United States for the presence of any of these chemicals, and what little testing the FDA, EPA and USDA do perform almost seems deliberately designed to shield the tobacco industry from investigation. It’s not as if the FDA doesn’t have the authority to demand that Tobacco companies at least keep the contamination down a little.
907(a)(1)(B) of Section 907 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act:
(B) ADDITIONAL SPECIAL RULE.—Beginning 2 years after the date of enactment of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, a tobacco product manufacturer shall not use tobacco, including foreign grown tobacco, that contains a pesticide chemical residue that is at a level greater than is specified by any tolerance applicable under Federal law to domestically grown tobacco.
Please keep that language in mind as you browse the list below. Chronic low-dose exposure to any one of the pesticides on this list, just by itself, is enough to cause serious damage to human adults, children and babies. The US government, along with the health authorities of every state, seem collectively uninterested in knowing what dozens of these violent chemicals, all being either burned or heated, smoked or vaporized and then inhaled actively or passively are doing to smokers or vapers, their families and everybody else downwind every day of their lives.
One last thing – notice that there are a lot of banned pesticides on the list. That’s because the Tobacco industry recognizes that large stores of these chemicals still exist and farmers still use them for one simple reason – they kill bugs. It might also be that these chemicals are still being made in black factories in India and China.
Whether using banned pesticides or not, most small farmers in the Third World can’t even read the labels, if there are any, so all they care about is killing bugs and fungus. Every pound of tobacco that bugs eat and fungus destroys is one less pound the farmer has to sell to feed his family, which doesn’t mean that the kids just go without a snack for a day or two.
So of course hundreds of thousands of small tobacco farmers worldwide are going to use triple-witching stuff like Endrin, Heptachlor, Aldrin, and Dieldrin whenever they can get it or whenever they are told to use it. Because while manufacturing of these incredibly toxic chemicals is banned almost everywhere, ‘black’ factories in China and India are churning out the oldies but goodies by the ton and selling them in countries where 50% of all pesticides are used on just one crop – tobacco.
But of course regulatory authorities in the ‘advanced’ countries like the US don’t test for these banned pesticides in anything anymore, much less in tobacco products like cigarettes, because “nobody uses them anymore and all the old stores have been used up or destroyed long ago”.
This is not a list of recommended CPAs (Crop Protection Agents) for tobacco. That is a matter for official and/or industry bodies in each country.
GRLs have not yet been set for all CPAs registered for tobacco. Setting GRLs is an ongoing process based on a list of priorities decided by frequency of use and importance to leaf production.
The presence of a compound does not imply endorsement by CORESTA
The entries in the list do not replace MRLs (Maximum Residue Levels) set by the authorities. Compliance with MRLs is a legal requirement for countries that have set them for
No.
CPA
GRL
(ppm)
Residue definition
Notes
1
2,4,5-T
0.05
2,4,5-T
2
2,4-D
0.2
2,4-D
3
Acephate
0.1
Acephate
4
Acetamiprid
3
Acetamiprid
5
Acibenzolar-S-methyl
5
Acibenzolar-S-methyl
6
Alachlor
0.1
Alachlor
7
Aldicarb (S)
0.5
sum of Aldicarb, Aldicarb sulfoxide and Aldicarb sulfone, expressed as Aldicarb
In countries where fungal diseases such as blue mould are a persistent problem in the field throughout the growing season, the use of dithio- carbamates (DTC) fungicides may be an essential part of the season-long disease management strategy and in keeping with GAP as a means of ensuring crop quality and economic viability for the producer. Under high disease pressure residues of dithio- carbamates (DTC) fungicides slightly in excess of the specified GRL may be observed. In countries where there is not a field fungal disease problem the use of fungicides is not necessary, and there should be no residues detected. Consistent with GAP, dithiocarbamates (DTC) fungicides must be used only according to label instructions to combat fungal diseases in the seedbed and in the field.
No.
CPA
GRL
(ppm)
Residue definition
Notes
47
Endosulfans (S)
1
sum of alpha- and beta-isomers and Endosulfan-sulphate expressed as Endosulfan
48
Endrin
0.05
Endrin
49
Ethoprophos
0.1
Ethoprophos
50
Famoxadone
5
Famoxadone
51
Fenamiphos (S)
0.5
sum of Fenamiphos, Fenamiphos sulfoxide and Fenamiphos sulfone expressed as Fenamiphos
52
Fenitrothion
0.1
Fenitrothion
53
Fenthion (S)
0.1
sum of Fenthion, Fenthion sulfoxide and Fenthion sulfone expressed as Fenthion
54
Fenvalerate (S)
1
Fenvalerate (sum of all isomers including Esfenvalerate)
sum of Heptachlor and two Heptachlor epoxides (cis- and trans-) expressed as Heptachlor
62
Hexachlorobenzene
0.02
Hexachlorobenzene
63
Imidacloprid
5
Imidacloprid
64
Indoxacarb (S)
15
Sum of S isomer + R isomer
65
Iprodione (S)
0.5
sum of Iprodione and N-3,5- dichlorophenyl-3-isopropyl-2,4- dioxoimidazolyzin-1-carboxamide expressed as Iprodione
66
Malathion
0.5
Malathion
67
Maleic hydrazide
80
Maleic hydrazide (free and bounded form)
In some instances, where GAP is implemented and label recom- mendations with regard to application rates and timing are strictly adhered to, residue levels may exceed the current GRL of 80 ppm as a result of extreme weather conditions and the current technology available for application. However, as with all CPAs, all efforts should be made to strictly follow label application rates, and use should be no more than necessary to achieve the desired effect.
68
Metalaxyl (S)
2
sum of all isomers including Metalaxyl-M / Mefenoxam
69
Methamidophos
1
Methamidophos
70
Methidathion
0.1
Methidathion
71
Methiocarb (S)
0.2
sum of Methiocarb, Methiocarb sulfoxide, and Methiocarb sulfone expressed as Methiocarb
sum of Dichlorvos, Naled, and Trichlorfon expressed as Dichlorvos
see Dichlorvos
107
Trifluralin
0.1
Trifluralin
Carbendazim is the degradation product of Benomyl and Thiophanate-methyl. In the case the same sample contains residues of both Carbendazim and/or Benomyl/Thiophanate-methyl, the sum of the residues should not exceed 2
Deltamethrin is the degradation product of Tralomethrin. In the case the same sample contains residues of both Deltamethrin and Tralomethrin, the sum of the two residues should not exceed 1
Dichlorvos is the degradation product of Naled and In the case the same sample contains residues of both Dichlorvos and/or Naled/Trichlorfon, the sum of the residues should not exceed 0.1 ppm.
Omethoate is the degradation product of Dimethoate. In the case the same sample contains residues of both Dimethoate and Omethoate, the sum of the two residues should not exceed 0.5
The Dithiocarbamates Group includes the EBDCs: Mancozeb, Maneb, Metiram, Nabam and Zineb – as well as Amobam, Ferbam, Policarbamate, Propineb, Thiram and
Methomyl is the degradation product of Thiodicarb. In the case the same sample contains residues of both Methomyl and Thiodicarb, the sum of the two residues should not exceed 1
Fluopyram added to GRL list June
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