Cigarette: a slender roll of cut tobacco enclosed in paper and meant to be smoked
Less commonly spelled as cigaret, especially among older generations in the United States. The first known use of cigarette is from 1832. Cigarette as a word passed to the English language from French (“cigarette” also in French) – which is the diminutive of cigar (cigare in French) in the sense of being smaller in size compared to the traditional cigars. Cigar comes from the from the Spanish word, cigarro.
Machine-made cigarettes are made up of plant material (dried and processed tobacco leaf stems), a rolling paper wrapper and filter (cigarette butt). The filter traps larger pieces of the partially burned tobacco while smoke travels through it into the smoker’s mouth. Filters do not render cigarette smoke meaningfully less harmful – regardless of how sophisticated is the filter design.
Anatomy of a Cigarette
The anatomy of a cigarette reveals a complex design rooted not in simplicity, but in a triumph of industrial ingenuity. What appears to be a modest roll of tobacco and paper is, in fact, a chemically engineered delivery system fine-tuned for nicotine delivery, burn control, and consumer reassurance. The design of a cigarette incorporates several engineered components, including processed forms of tobacco, specialized paper, and various types of filters. Each element contributes to the cigarette’s physical structure, burn behavior, and smoke delivery characteristics. These features reflect a combination of agricultural materials, industrial processing, and performance engineering aimed at producing a consistent smoking product. Far from a natural indulgence, the modern cigarette is a highly engineered product and the most effective nicotine delivery solution known to mankind.
Tobacco
Contrary to the romanticized image of hand-rolled leaves, only a fraction of the tobacco in a modern cigarette actually comes from whole tobacco leaves. Modern cigarettes typically contain a blend of materials derived from the tobacco plant and much of what fills today’s cigarette is a processed material known as reconstituted tobacco – or more euphemistically, homogenized sheet tobacco. This material is produced from a pulp composed of tobacco stems, leaf fragments, and other parts of the plant that might otherwise be discarded during processing. The pulp is formed into sheets, which are then treated with nicotine and various other substances to restore components that may be lost during manufacturing. This mixture may also include a wide range of additives, up to 600 in total, some of which influence flavor, burn characteristics, or nicotine delivery. Among these additives are ammonia, which facilitates nicotine absorption in the lungs, and chocolate powder, which smooths out the otherwise acrid bite of burning tobacco. After this chemical enhancement, the reconstituted tobacco is shredded to resemble the real thing.
In addition to reconstituted tobacco, many cigarettes include expanded or puffed tobacco. This material is created by treating cut tobacco with gases such as freon or ammonia, followed by a freeze-drying process. This treatment increases the volume of the tobacco, making it less dense. The expanded form allows manufacturers to maintain cigarette size while using less raw tobacco per unit and can also influence the concentration of tar in the smoke. Thereby, expanded or puffed tobacco not only stretches the yield per crop but also lowers tar concentrations per cigarette: enter low tar-nicotine cigarettes, commonly known as Lights (light cigarettes).
Cigarette Paper
The paper used to wrap cigarettes is designed for more than just containment. Far from being an ordinary paper, the wrap plays a pivotal role in shaping the smoker’s experience by regulating the burn rate and smoke production of the cigarette. Most cigarette paper contains a series of burn rings – alternating bands of varying thickness that help control combustion. These rings help slow the burn when the cigarette is not being actively puffed and increase the rate during inhalation, creating a more consistent smoking experience. The cigarette paper is a precision instrument masked in simplicity.
The paper may also include chemical additives to influence its burning properties. One commonly used compound is titanium oxide, which helps maintain a steady burn. These features contribute to the way a cigarette behaves when smoked, including how long it burns and how much smoke it produces. Ironically, this engineered combustibility has been linked to countless cigarette-initiated fires – an issue that manufacturers began to address seriously in recent decades by developing Fire Standard Compliant (FSC) or Reduced Ignition Propensity (RIP) cigarettes.
Filters
The now-ubiquitous filter tip began as a niche product but surged in popularity after the 1950s. Filters are typically made from tightly packed synthetic fibers and are designed to reduce the amount of particulate matter and other components that reach the smoker. Some filter types include charcoal elements, which are added in small quantities to the fiber material. These are intended to absorb certain gases present in the smoke. However, there is no scientific evidence to support the idea that charcoal filters reduce health risks.
Many filters also include ventilation holes located around the circumference of the filter tip. These holes allow air to mix with the smoke as it is inhaled, which can affect the measurements of tar and nicotine in laboratory testing. When smoking machines are used to test cigarette emissions, these holes remain uncovered, resulting in lower recorded levels of tar and nicotine. In real-world use, however, the positioning of fingers or lips during smoking may partially or fully block these ventilation holes, potentially altering the smoke composition that reaches the smoker.
The Act of Smoking
Smoking: The practice of inhaling smoke from burning tobacco leaves
Nicotiana, commonly known as the tobacco plant, is a genus of herbaceous plants and shrubs in the family Solanaceae, that is indigenous to the Americas, Australia, Southwestern Africa and the South Pacific. The nicotine content of Nicotiana tabacum, or cultivated tobacco, varieties generally ranges from 0.3% to 3% of dry weight of the leaves, although leaves with higher nicotine content (5% to 7%) do exist.
Smoker: a person who smokes tobacco regularly
Wolrd Health Organization (WHO) defines smoker as someone that has smoked at least one cigarette during the last 30 days. U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines smoker as a person that has smoked 100 cigarettes in his lifetime and currently smokes a cigarette either every day or some days. There are around 30 million smokers in the U.S. and a billion smokers in the world.
People smoke because they find it enjoyable. Despite the damaging effects of smoking on the human body, smokers find it hard to quit because of nicotine cravings – in other words, the bad feelings imposed to the user by his own brain that is in need of “joyful” nicotine.
Nicotine: an addictive, recreational chemical
Nicotine is a psychoactive drug: when taken in or administered into human body, nicotine affects mental processes, e.g. perception, consciousness, cognition or mood and emotions. Smoking is when the user inhales and exhales smoke from burning tobacco leaves that are rolled into a wrapper (aka cigarette). Users light the end of the cigarette and pull smoke into their mouths through the other end. The smoke travels down the airways, into the lungs and through the bloodstream to the brain and other organs.
Nicotine releases chemicals in the brain that make smokers feel good: relaxed and calm, buzzed and energized, attentive and more able to focus on tasks. Smoking is also a social activity and a part of people’s routine, just like the morning coffee. Smokers smoke to have fun, to calm themselves before being around a lot of people, or to focus and work. Some people like the taste or just the feeling of holding a cigarette in their hands.
Nicotine works on human’s brain to create a relaxing, pleasurable feeling that makes it addictive (i.e. brain will demand more of it as the level in the bloodstream goes down) and tough to quit. But smoking tobacco puts the users at an elevated risk of cancer, stroke, heart attack, lung disease and other health issues.
Tar: a sticky-brown substance that collects in the cigarette filter and lungs when tobacco smoke is breathed in
Tar is an acronym of Total Aerosol Residue (TAR) – that is to say, what remains when air is taken out of the cigarette smoke. However, over time, due to the physical resemblance and to take benefit of the negative connotation associated with the actual tar (a dark, thick flammable liquid distilled from wood or coal, consisting of a mixture of hydrocarbons, resins, alcohols, and other compounds) used in road-making and timber coating, TAR is miscalled as tar.
Tar is a sticky-brown substance that collects partially in the cigarette filter and mostly in the lungs when cigarette smoke is breathed in. It can also collect on the smoker’s fingers and teeth, staining them with a yellow-brown color. Tar contains cancer-causing chemicals. It also increases the risk of lung diseases, such as emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In the smoker terminology, tar is the “mother of all evils”: smokers smoke because of nicotine and they die because of tar.
IQOS-owner, Philip Morris International (PMI), strategically uses “lack of tar production” in IQOS as a convincing statement for IQOS being a better option to smoking. After smoking a cigarette, smokers can easily observe the yellow-brown tar stain on the cigarette filter; after using an IQOS heated tobacco stick, filter remains unstained. However, the claim that IQOS does not produce tar is open to debate if tar is defined correctly as Total Aerosol Residue. IQOS produces an aresol which has a residue (like all aerosols) and leaves a colorless tar on the cigarette filter and elsewhere. Obviously, harm profile of a smoking article depends on the chemical composition of its tar, rather than the color of the tar.
Carbon monoxide: an odorless, colorless gas that kills without warning
Carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas, is produced when something is burnt. As you burn a cigarette to smoke it, carbon monoxide is produced as part of the cigarette smoke. You can’t smell it, see it or taste it. Obviously, the amount of carbon monoxide produced by smoking a cigarette is not large enough to kill you immediately – but it may kill you over time. Carbon monoxide reduces the amount of oxygen carried by the blood and organs of the body don’t get the amount of oxygen they need. Remember the famous erectile dysfunction warning on some cigarette packs? [ A side note: we have come across smokers asking the retailer a pack of cigarette that does not cause erectile dysfunction. Maybe it was a date night!]
Anyway, more importantly, to supply the body with enough oxygen, the heart has to work harder – which increases the risk of heart disease and stroke over time.
Over 5,000 different chemicals
Burning is a complex chemical & uncontrollable process that produces thousands of chemicals. Tobacco smoke, a product of burning, is composed of thousands of chemicals which include toxic metals, poisonous gases and chemicals that are known to cause cancer. At least 70 of the chemicals found in tobacco smoke cause cancer – including 1,3-Butadiene (used in rubber manufacturing), Arsenic (a poison), Benzene (an industrial solvent, made from crude oil), Beryllium (used in nuclear reactors), Cadmium (used in batteries), Chromium (used to manufacture dye, paint and car alloys), Formaldehyde (used in science labs and mortuaries), Polonium-21 (a highly radioactive element) and Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (a group of dangerous chemicals found in oil and coal, including benzo(a)pyrene). There are also some chemicals in the cigarette smoke that help other cancer-causing chemicals to damage the cells of the body; consequently, when these chemicals are inhaled together in the cigarette smoke, they cause greater damage to the body.
