What's in a cigarette?

Do you know that there are about 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke? These poisonous chemicals include:

Acetone - widely used as a solvent, for example in nail polish remover.
Ammonia - is found in cleaning fluids.
Arsenic - a deadly poison, used in insecticides.
Benzene - used as a solvent in fuel and chemical production.
Carbon monoxide (CO) - an odourless, tasteless and poisonous gas. It makes breathing more difficult as it combines with the body’s blood which carries oxygen around the body. Oxygen is essential for our bodies to work properly. Up to 15% of a smoker's blood may be carrying CO instead of oxygen, which means the heart has to work harder, which can cause coronary heart disease and circulation problems.
Cadmium - a highly poisonous metal used in batteries.
Cyanide - a deadly poison.
Formaldehyde - used to preserve dead bodies.
Shellac - becomes a wood varnish when mixed with a form of alcohol.
Tar - a mixture of chemicals (formaldehyde, arsenic and cyanide to name a few). About 70% of the tar is left in smokers' lungs when they inhale cigarette smoke and this causes many serious lung diseases.

Are low tar cigarettes better for you?

'Low tar' cigarettes are just as harmful for you as regular brands.

You might think that the tar and nicotine numbers on cigarette packs would correspond to the amount of tar and nicotine you actually breathe in. But in fact, the numbers are based on tests that use machines to smoke the cigarettes rather than real people.

When real people smoke 'low tar' cigarettes they breathe in much harder, to get the amount of nicotine their body craves.

These cigarettes may be carefully designed to taste weaker but they are probably doing your body just as much damage as the 'stronger' brands.