Tobacco is a dirty weed.  I like it.

                                            It satisfies no normal need.  I like it.

                                            It makes you thin, it makes you lean,

                                            It takes the hair right off your bean.

                                            It’s the worst darn stuff I’ve ever seen.

                                                   I like it.

                                                                -- G.L. Hemminger

                                                               Penn State Froth (1915)

I wonder if modern macrobiotic sage George Ohsawa was fully aware of the health and environmental dangers caused by tobacco each time he lit up a Kool cigarette to contemplate the order of the universe.  It also concerns me when I see other macrobiotic practitioners smoking cigarettes while they are lecturing to various groups and promoting the yin/yang approach to achieve balance of body/mind/spirit in the natural world.   I wonder, and worry, about the children, who enter their lives under the guidance and care of macrobiotic parents who smoke cigarettes and exhale second-hand smoke in the same environment that they are being reared in.   

Maybe I have become a skeptic after 35 years of macrobiotic practice, and maybe by the power of suggestion I will come to believe that my bladder cancer, which has been linked to long term cigarette smoking, is just an illusion. Unfortunately I was born a realist.  

Hopefully my personal story and research on the dangers of tobacco smoke will help encourage some macrobiotic readers to take a slightly broader view on the detrimental effects of tobacco smoking. Maybe this will help to discourage the smoking habit, or at least raise ones awareness of how it affects and impacts other lives and the environment itself.  

The Sacred (& Deadly) Nightshade

Nicotiana tabacum, better known to the layperson as tobacco, is a plant indigenous to the Americas. It is a member of the deadly nightshade family of plants (Solanaceae) that produce the common potato, eggplant, potato, and such poisonous drugs as belladonna, datura, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine.  In simple macrobiotic terms, tobacco is an extremely yin botanical.  In macrobiotic literature we are told to avoid using nightshade plants because of this extreme of yin dominance.

It is believed that tobacco growing in the Americas began about 6,000 B.C. and by 1 B.C., American Indians began using tobacco in religious and medicinal practices. For Native Americans tobacco use was not a personal habit or form of recreation but a ceremony reserved for special occasions. Indigenous tribes have various stories about the origin of tobacco and how it was given to the people as a gift from the spirit world and encouraged using the plant in moderation to prevent its abuse and misuse.

Today, commercial development and misuse of the sacred tobacco plant has made it the leading preventable cause of death among Native peoples in the United States. According to the American Lung Association Fact Sheet on American Indians and Alaskan Natives and Tobacco (Sept, 2000), among racial and ethnic groups, the prevalence of current smoking is highest among American Indians/Alaskan Natives (34.1 percent), followed by African Americans (26.7 percent), whites (25.3 percent), Hispanics (20.4 percent) and Asians/Pacific Islanders (16.9 percent).

In 1826, the pure form of nicotine was first discovered and soon thereafter, scientists concluded that nicotine was a dangerous poison that could kill a man -- a fact that already been established in the late 1500’s, after tobacco promoter Thomas Harriet died of nose cancer in Virginia.  Less than 100 years after Harriet’s death, Italian biologist, Francesco Redi published a scientific study on oil of tobacco that detailed the lethal effects it had on the body. Redi’s research was corroborated nearly 300 years later, when Dr. Ernst L. Wynders found that putting cigarette tar on the backs of mice caused tumors.

In 1849, Dr. Joel Shaw published “Tobacco: Its History, Nature, and Effects on the Body and Mind”, and identified eighty-seven conditions as being tobacco-linked. Ten years later, cancer of the lip was found to be 100% tobacco-correlated in a study by French Dr. Bouisson.  From the years 1879 through 1889 three cases were tried in two American states that argued the position that tobacco delivered a dangerous, addictive drug, nicotine (Carver v State, 69 Ind 61; 35 Am Rep 205, Nov 1879, Mueller v State, 76 Ind 310; 40 Am Rep 245, May 1881, and State v Ohmer, 34 Mo App 115, 5 Feb 1889).

In 1928, Drs. Herbert L. Lombard and Carl B. Doering published "Cancer Studies . . . Habits, Characteristics and Environment of Individuals With and Without Cancer," in the New England Journal of Medicine (April 26, 1928 pps. 481-487). In this report, data was presented showing that among smokers of tobacco the percentage rates of premature death was higher than among nonsmokers:

Nicotine is a colorless, oily, liquid alkaloid, C₁₀,H₁₄,N₂, that constitutes the principal active constituent of tobacco.  On exposure to air nicotine turns brown and it boils at 477 degrees F (247 C) under a pressure of 745 mm.  Partial decomposition occurs at this temperature. It is soluble in water and completely miscible is alcohol, chloroform, ether, and petroleum ether.  Nicotine affects the level of dopamine present in the brain at any moment. Dopamine is the hormone that controls pleasure levels. Dopamine levels increase when nicotine is present.  Addiction occurs when the craving for pleasure levels rise.  Dependency on nicotine is both from a physical as well as psychological level.

In its dried form tobacco contains 1 percent to 3 percent of the drug nicotine. In small doses it is a nerve stimulant, especially upon the autonomic nervous system, and thus promotes the flow of adrenaline and other internal secretions. In larger doses, nicotine paralyzes the autonomic nervous system by blocking the transmission of nerve impulses across the spaces between adjoining nerve cells.  Larger doses can cause convulsions and death.  The fresh leaves of the tobacco plant are known to cause poisoning when consumed and blood sucking leeches that attach to the skin of smokers have been known to drop dead from nicotine poisoning within a span of five minutes. A single drop of pure nicotine is enough to kill you if it is on your skin.

The health hazards of nicotine were further compounded in 1910, when lead arsenate, a by-product of arsenic, was introduced as a broad spectrum pesticide for agricultural use.  Mixed together with together with oil, lead arsenate gave good suppression of most pests, including the dozen or so insects that thrived on large-sale tobacco farms. However, insects soon developed resistance to the pesticide, and by the 1930s and 1940s, growers were spraying frequently and still losing crops to insects.  

Arsenic is an insoluble poison that permanently poisons the soil.  In doses significantly larger than 1 grain (70 mg) arsenic causes poisoning in humans.  In her book, Silent Spring, author/scientist Rachel Carson reported that cigarettes made from tobacco grown on farms that have long discontinued spraying with lead arsenate continue to show an increase of arsenic content – as much as 600 per cent more, as time passes. This reason is due to the tobacco plants ability to pick up arsenate of lead from the soil and convert it into a soluble form.

During the 1940’s to the 1950’s, more modern “organic-based” broad spectrum pesticides and herbicides were introduced to replace lead arsenate in the United States.  By the early 1960’s, however, it was found that this class of chemicals were not only ineffective in controlling insects and weeds, but their residues began to kill off large numbers of plant and animal species and poisoned wells and waterways. 

One of the most deadly of these pesticides was DDT (short for dichloro-diphenyl-trichloro-ethane), a chlorinated hydrocarbon. At first the pesticide was considered to be safer than lead arsenate and it proved successful in control of crops at lower costs.  But then resistance and resurgence of pests soon became a problem. As resistance to DDT grew, new types of pesticides were developed, including organophosphates and carbamates.  Pests eventually developed resistance to those as well but the largest drawback of those classes of chemicals was that they were found to be more toxic to humans than the pesticides and herbicides used in the past.

Despite its ban in the US in 1972, the effects of DDT continue to be evident in wildlife populations according to biologists. Rachel Carson called these farm pesticides “elixirs of death” which come into contact with every human being in the world: 

“They have been recovered from most of the major systems and even from the streams of groundwater flowing unseen through the earth.  Residues of these chemicals linger in soil to which they may have been applied a dozen years before.  They have entered and lodged in the bodies of fish, birds, reptiles, and domestic and wild animals so universally that scientists carrying on animal experiments find it almost impossible to locate subjects  free from such contaminations.” (Silent Spring,  p. 16).

John Elliot, a bird researcher with the Canadian Wildlife Service in British Columbia has found DDT in bird’s eggs with levels that are higher than first reported 20-25 years ago. Tobacco and cotton farming used more DDT than any other crop from the time of its introduction until its ban. In 1988 the EPA reported that the ground water in 32 states had been contaminated with seventy-four different agricultural chemicals.  Since 1962 farm use of pesticides has doubled to 1.1 billon tons a year – an estimated increase of 400 percent. Most of these are narrow-spectrum pesticides with even higher toxicity than those which preceded them and have not been adequately tested.

According to Gary Ostrander, Hopkins professor of biology and comparative medicine, and John Harshberger, a professor at George Washington University who directs the Registry of Tumors in Lower Animals, there is conclusive evidence that cancer exists throughout the phylogenetic tree. Once the food chain becomes poisoned the domino effect begins and within a short time the food chain becomes poisoned everywhere.

How did Ohsawa justify the use of tobacco in light of the mass destruction of life forms resulting from the spraying of lethal chemicals on tobacco crops?  In the Book of Judgment under the chapter titled “Supreme Judging Ability”, Ohsawa wrote that we should have respect for all life, not just human life:

“To understand respect for life, one must first know life’s order and then be able to practice it in order to realize longevity and rejuvenescence, universal love and infinite indulgence, without violence or cruelty.”  ( Book of Judgment, p. 108 )

                                     (Photo courtesy of University of Michigan and NOAA/ Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory)

Photos depicting large tumors on tiny animals (zooplankton) at the base of the food chain, found in one of the Great Lakes.

In 1964, two years before Ohsawa’s death approximately 7000 articles relating to smoking and disease prompted the Advisory Committee to the U.S. Surgeon General to conclude that cigarette smoking was the cause of lung and laryngeal cancer in men and a probable cause of lung cancer in women, and the most probable cause of bronchitis in both sexes. Ohsawa apparently didn’t do his homework.

After these risks were published, a subsequent decline in smoking, along with the incidence of smoking-related cancers also declined. In addition, age-adjusted death rates per 100,000 persons for heart disease decreased from 307.4 in 1950 to 134.6 in 1996. It was the period between 1964-1992 when it was found that nearly 1.6 million deaths caused by smoking were prevented (Wingo PA, Ries LA, Giovino GA, et al. Annual report to the nation on the status of cancer, 1973-1996, and J Natl Cancer Inst 1999;91:675-90.)

According to the Office on Smoking and Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, lung cancer was rare during the first decades of the 20th century, but as cigarette smoking became increasingly popular, the incidence of lung cancer became epidemic. In 1930, the lung cancer death rate for men was 4.9 per 100,000; in 1990, the rate had increased to 75.6 per 100,000.

A Little More than Yellow & Gray

George Ohsawa did not give lengthy discourses on the pros and cons of tobacco smoking but what he did do, by way of demonstration, was to show that the gray smoke emitted from the front end of the cigarette was yin, and the yellow smoke from the rear was yang. 

He probably wasn’t aware that more than 3,000 chemicals are present in tobacco smoke, including at least 60 known carcinogens such as nitrosamines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. That information was not well publicized during Ohsawa’s life. If so, I wonder if he would have endorsed smoking as does his disciple, Michio Kushi, who smokes the Marlboro brand and is aware of tobacco ingredients.  Do any macrobiotics today really think we are going to believe that the yang fire from a match will fully neutralize these powerful poisons as yellow smoke is inhaled and the gray smoke is left to linger in the environment?  It is the burning tobacco coal that just so happens to make the nicotine delivery system (and other toxins) transferable.

Ohsawa was a smart guy, no doubt, and his lifetime experiences are legendary.  But it takes a lot more than smarts and experience to know that some of the invisible compounds in cigarette smoke become carcinogenic only after they are activated by specific enzymes found in many tissues in the body. It takes dedicated research and a precise means for measuring and analyzing how these activated compounds can become part of DNA molecules which interfere with the normal growth of cells.

Other scientific findings indicate that when a cigarette is smoked, about half of the smoke generated is sidestream smoke.  This “gray” colored smoke contains essentially the same compounds as those identified in the mainstream “yellow” smoke inhaled by the smoker.

Combined together these two types of smoke produce ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke) whose chemicals include substances that irritate the lining of the lung and other tissues, carcinogens, mutagens, and developmental toxicants. 

Tobacco smoke is known to contain at least 60 carcinogens, including formaldehyde and benzo[a]pyrene, and six developmental toxicants, including nicotine and carbon monoxide. Perhaps most damaging of them all is carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide (CO) attaches to the red blood cells that transport oxygen to each living cell throughout the body. As levels of CO rise in the lungs from smoke inhalation, chemical strangulation occurs and metabolism begins to shut down.

The benzene group of compounds is known to cause cancer. Benzene poisoning can also produce Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and when it gets into bone marrow it can cause leukemia.benzene. The aldehyde compounds are also unstable solvents in tobacco smoke that combine quickly with other chemicals. When formic acid and aldehyde combine they become lethal free radicals and damage DNA wherever it comes into contact.

Studies dating from the 1970s have consistently shown that children and infants exposed to ETS in the home have significantly elevated rates of respiratory symptoms and respiratory tract infections. These findings prompted recommendations that ETS be eliminated from the environment of small children.

In adults, ETS can worsen existing pulmonary symptoms for people with asthma and chronic bronchitis, as well as for people with allergic conditions. Eye irritation, sore throat, nausea, and hoarseness are also common complaints.

What we now know about ETS is that nonsmokers who are exposed to it absorb nicotine and other compounds just as smokers do. As the exposure to ETS increases, the levels of these harmful substances in the body increase as well.

In 1986, two reports were published that correlated ETS exposure and the adverse health effects in nonsmokers: one was by the U.S. Surgeon General and the other by the Expert Committee on Passive Smoking, National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council (NAS/NRC). The findings in these reports concluded that: 1) ETS can cause lung cancer in healthy adult nonsmokers 2) Children of parents who smoke have more respiratory symptoms and acute lower respiratory tract infections, as well as evidence of reduced lung function, than do children of nonsmoking parents; and 3) That separating smokers and nonsmokers within the same air space may reduce but does not eliminate a nonsmoker's exposure to ETS.

Photo on left shows lung with Emphysema.  The one on the right has

cancer.  Both are directly tied to cigarette smoke.

The EPA later confirmed the above findings in its own study on the respiratory health effects of ETS and decided to classify ETS as a Group A carcinogen—a category reserved only for the most dangerous cancer-causing agents in humans.  More recent studies and the EPA's report point to a 20 percent increased risk of lung cancer in nonsmokers due to ETS.

In response to evidence that E