List of 4000 chemicals in cigarette smoke?

[Mr Pink]

Everywhere on the internet I can read comments like this: "Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including 43 known cancer-causing (carcinogenic) compounds and 400 other toxins. These include...." All over ECF I can read references to the "4000 chemicals..." However, I cannot find anything to substantiate the number 4000. I can find lists in the hundreds only.

Now, no one needs to convince me that there's a lot of bad ingredients in cigarettes and a lot of bad chemicals in cigarette smoke. That's true, I get that. However, I'm starting to wonder if this 4000 number is just a number. One that is bandied about and constantly echoed with no factual listing anywhere. Similar to "6 million homeless" (actual number ~600K, or 1/10th), or "every 10 seconds a woman is beaten" (means every woman in the US is beaten within 10 years), or "one in ten" are homosexual (a best accounting lends to 3/100). You get the idea. Folks misstate TONS of "facts" and I just wondered if there is anything someone could point me to that actually backs up, even lists, these "4000 chemicals" that is referenced so often on ECF and elsewhere. Any links or info is appreciated.

 

[rolygate]

Yeah.

Statistics are just so comforting.

Well, there is apparently some research that can be referenced: in 2009 a team published a document identifying around 5,300 ingredients. It seems they may have thought there were around double this number, leaving half the total unidentified, meaning in their view that there could be perhaps 10,000 constituents, perhaps in smaller quantities than those they identified. Somebody then hypothesised that the number might go as high as 100,000 if trace amounts could be identified. There seems to be proof of 5,000 or so, at any rate:

Rodgman, A. and Perfetti, T.A. (2009) The Chemical Components of tobacco and tobacco Smoke. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

...which is reference #4 in this PDF:

Electronic cigarettes as a harm reduction strategy for tobacco control: A step forward or a repeat of past mistakes?
by Zachary Cahn and Michael Siegel

...where Cahn and Siegel say:

".....As ~5300 of the estimated 10,000 to 100,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke have ever been identified [4], we already have more comprehensive knowledge of the chemical constituents of electronic cigarettes than tobacco ones."

[possibly this should have been, ".....As only ~5300 of the estimated 10,000....."]

(By which I think they meant that as only a percentage of tobacco smoke ingredients have been identified, and as there seem to be many more unknown constituents; and as the ingredients of e-cigarette vapor are all identified, and as there are far fewer - then we actually know a lot more about the constituents of e-cigarette vapor than cigarette smoke. This of course is the opposite of statements by pharma agents, who say we know little about e-cigarette vapor.)

I found the above PDF through a link posted by Vocalek [thanks!] on ECF somewhere, but can't remember where now (should be available via Search). You would need to then locate the referenced doc on the web, if that is possible, to confirm this research. However if Dr Siegel states that around 5,300 constituents have been identified, and that there may be more, then it is probably kosher.

I'm happy to use the popular but conservative figure of 4,000, in that case...