Name: Yuzhu Gong Due Date: 2015/12/24
Article Title: Radioactive Smoke
Author/Source: Scientific American
Article Title: Radioactive Smoke
Author/Source: Scientific American
A: List major ideas, concepts or key points - point by point
- Polonium 210 is far more widespread than many of us realize.
- Although polonium may not be the primary carcinogen in cigarette smoke, it may nonetheless cause thousands of deaths a year in the U.S. alone.
- Manufacturers even devised processes that would dramatically cut down the isotope’s concentrations in cigarette smoke.
- The problem is that the mucosal lining of the lung after someone dies decays within two to three hours.
- Because of the way our airways branch into bronchi, bronchioles and alveoli, the radioisotopes settle and concentrate at the points of bifurcation.
- Polonium 210 is a decay product of lead 210.
- Soils containing uranium-rich phosphate fertilizer would release radon 222 into the surrounding atmosphere, raising its concentration above normal levels.
- The radon would then decay into lead 210, which would deposit on the growing plants, sticking to the thousands of little hairs called trichomes that cover tobacco leaves.
- Thus, he reasoned that because of smokers’ chronic exposure to low, concentrated doses, polonium 210 was likely the primary cause of their lung cancer.
- But in the 1990s historic lawsuits brought by 46 U.S. states against the industry forced manufacturers to admit that smoking is dangerous and addictive, and resulted in the release of millions of internal documents.
- Interest in polonium in tobacco has been intermittent—and the tobacco men were wary of disturbing that peace.
- The industry debated the drawbacks and benefits of various ways to reduce polonium in cigarette smoke, among them adding materials to tobacco that would react with lead and polonium to prevent their transfer to smoke and developing a filter that would block polonium vapor.
- After the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act passed in June 2009.
- This legislation offers the first opportunity to challenge and force the tobacco industry to act on the results of their years of study.
- The World Health Organization has made clear that smoking is the most avoidable cause of death.
B: Summarize the author's main point or idea
Summary of Author's Main Points:
Polonium would be an excellent first “poison” to ban from tobacco. It is a single isotope, rather than a complex ingredient of smoke. Other poisons—such as tar or carbon monoxide—are difficult to keep out of the smoke, but polonium is not. Puff by puff, the poison builds up to the equivalent radiation dosage of 300 chest x-rays a year for a person who smokes one and a half packs a day. Polonium is the reason why smoking causes lung cancer. Thus President Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act into law. The legislation brings tobacco for the first time under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration. The danger would come not with a high dose at any given time but, rather, with continued exposure to small doses over an extended period. The industry’s four decades of research could give the FDA a head start toward getting concrete results. Moreover, some of the same steps that would reduce polonium concentrations in smoke.
C: Reaction to the article
My Own Thoughts on the Topic:
I was not surprised that many people got lung cancer because of this because one of my family member actually died from it. Therefore, I know the risks of smoking and understand the importance of banning polonium. It estimates that 1.3 million people die of lung cancer worldwide every year, 90 percent because of smoking. If polonium had been reduced through methods known to the industry, many thousands of those deaths could have been avoided. The industry’s lawyers made the conscious choice not to act on the results of their own scientists’ investigations. However, it is still people's choice to purchase cigarettes or not.
My Own Thoughts on the Topic:
I was not surprised that many people got lung cancer because of this because one of my family member actually died from it. Therefore, I know the risks of smoking and understand the importance of banning polonium. It estimates that 1.3 million people die of lung cancer worldwide every year, 90 percent because of smoking. If polonium had been reduced through methods known to the industry, many thousands of those deaths could have been avoided. The industry’s lawyers made the conscious choice not to act on the results of their own scientists’ investigations. However, it is still people's choice to purchase cigarettes or not.