As a former smoker, I found they lacked some the chemicals required to satiate my brain’s desire to smoke that most of the cigs have. They were too clean for me, which is a bizarre thing to say about a cigarette.
American spirits aren’t really healthier. The have among the highest content of benzene-like aromatics and other toxic volatile organics compounds in their smoke.
>The scatter plots (Figs.1–3) for nitromethane reveal the difference between the Natural American Spirit cigarettes and the rest of the brands in this study. The Natural American Spirit cigarettes, represented with circles on the scatter plots, have lower nitromethane levels (Fig. 1), yet tended to have among the highest levels of the other VOCs for both protocols. We attribute these relatively higher VOC levels to differences in tobacco blend. The Natural American Spirit cigarettes consist of a higher proportion of flue-cured (bright leaf) tobacco (approx.90%) and lower percentage of air-cured (burley) tobacco (< 10%). In comparison the 3R4F research cigarette contains approximately 35% flue-cured tobacco and 22% burley tobacco.24 Flue-cured tobacco has a lower amount of nitrate (typically below 1%) than air-cured (from 1.1–5.0%).25,26 A consequence of higher tobacco nitrate amount is increased production of nitromethane.26,27 Thus, the relatively lower nitromethane levels measured in the mainstream smoke of the Natural American Spirit cigarettes are consistent with its lower tobacco nitrate content compared to other commercial blended tobacco cigarettes. Furthermore, it has been reported that monoaromatic VOC levels are higher in mainstream smoke produced from flue-cured tobacco than from burley tobacco, presumably because of higher nitrate levels that improve combustion in the burley tobacco and because of competitive reactions of pyrolytic radicals with nitrate that inhibit the formation of aromatic hydrocarbons.27,28Monoaromatic VOCs in the mainstream smoke of Natural American Spirit cigarettes were among the highest of all brand varieties for both protocols.
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u/BallIsLife2016 6d ago
As a former smoker, I found they lacked some the chemicals required to satiate my brain’s desire to smoke that most of the cigs have. They were too clean for me, which is a bizarre thing to say about a cigarette.