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 "We already knew that many people, especially smokers, think smoking
might be dangerous for other people but not for themselves," said
lead study author Dr. Noel Brewer, a public health researcher at the
University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
"All cigarettes create smoke that has toxic and deadly chemicals,"
Dr. Brewer added by email. "Additives don't change tobacco smoke and
make it dangerous -- tobacco is inherently dangerous."
To see how the general public perceives the harms associated with
smoking, researchers examined data from three surveys done online
and by phone that included a total of more than 9,000 adults and
1,000 teens.
Among other things, respondents were asked if they had ever heard of
24 different chemicals found in tobacco smoke; how harmful they
considered them to be; and how much the presence of a particular
substance would prompt them to quit smoking.
Among adults, 61% surveyed by phone and 72% quizzed online
mistakenly thought most of the toxins in cigarettes came from
chemicals added by manufacturers to enhance the flavor or
performance of the products, the study found.
Just 31% of adults contacted by phone and 24% surveyed online
correctly believed harmful toxins in smoke come from the act of
burning a cigarette or even tobacco alone, researchers report
December 6 in Tobacco Control.
Smokers were more likely to have the facts wrong than non-smokers.
Teens were evenly split on the perceived source of harmful
substances, with 43% opting for additives and 46% for the burning of
the cigarette itself. For adolescents, there wasn't much difference
in their perceptions based on whether or not they actually smoked
themselves.
Up to about one in three adults and roughly one in four teens also
wrongly believed that filters successfully trap harmful chemicals
from cigarette smoke. Once again, this belief tended to be more
common among the smokers.
Nearly all of the survey participants had heard of nicotine, and
many of them were familiar with carbon monoxide. A small proportion
also said they were aware of toxins in cigarette smoke such as
ammonia, arsenic and formaldehyde.
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But people weren't consistently aware of nitrosamines, among the
most deadly chemicals produced in cigarette smoke, across the three
surveys.
Respondents were more likely to say that chemicals they had heard
of, and ones that started with letters rather than numbers would
tempt them to quit. But this enthusiasm was more common among
non-smokers than it was among smokers, and those with higher levels
of literacy and numeracy.
Meanwhile, chemicals ending in ‘ine’ were less likely to discourage
smoking among smokers and non-smokers, possibly because they sound
similar to nicotine, the researchers note.
At least some confusion is probably due to cigarette advertising and
packaging, especially cigarettes promoted as "additive-free" or
"natural," the authors conclude. Descriptions like this may lull
smokers into a false sense of security when they choose products
that don't appear to have added chemicals, researchers note.
"All of these statements are likely true, all are misleading because
they suggest cigarettes are safe in some way, and all distract
smokers from the fact that smoke from all cigarettes is deadly," Dr.
Brewer said.
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