A.
- Death of Alexander Lintvinenko died in a London hospital that had evidence of a cold war-style assassination.
- Further inspection shows that the poison that killed him had a rare radioactive isotope
- Called polonium 210
- More widespread than we think
- people worldwide smoke almost six trillion cigarettes a year
- each one delivers a small amount of polonium 210 to the lungs
- poison builds up to be equivalent to 300 chest x-rays a year
- polonium causes thousands of deaths a year
- tobacco industry has known about polonium in cigarettes for nearly 50 years
- manufacturers devised processes that would dramatically cut down the isotope’s concentrations in cigarette smoke
- tobacco companies leaving their research as a secret
- cigarettes still contain as much polonium today as they did half a century ago
- Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act into law
- brought tobacco for the first time under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration, allowing the agency to regulate certain components of cigarette
- polonium was removed from cigarette smoke
- removal of polonium had not commercial advantage
B. It first started off with a KGB dying and the cause being that he was poisoned. Upon further research, it was later found that the actual cause of his death was the fact that he had a rare radioactive isotope called polonium 210 in his system. He got this dangerous substance in his system just from doing one thing: smoking a cigarette. Cigarettes only a few years ago believe it or not were actually even more dangerous then they actual are now. The big reason for this was because of this isotope called polonium 210. People nowadays smoke almost six trillion cigarettes a year and each one of these would deliver a small amount of this polonium 210 into the lungs. When this poison builds up within the body, it is the same thing as having 300 chest x-rays in only one year. Polonium 210 is said to cause thousands of deaths a year and that is only one substance that is found within a single cigarette. The tobacco industry really does not seem to care about the problem as well. It is stated within the article that their research is very secretive and they have known about polonium 210 within their products for almost 50 years. This was so bad that only recently, in June 2009, Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act into law.
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C. If there is one serious pet peeve I have in my life is when people smoke cigarettes. Cigarettes are the most idiotic thing ever invented in my opinion and to be honest, I feel that they should just be banned altogether. There is no real benefits to cigarettes and I just feel that not only is it a waste of money, money that we should not be giving to these big tobacco industries, but also because of the serious amount of health risks that comes with smoking these things. I do think that it is good that they were able to take out polonium out of the cigarettes but I feel that it does not help fix the real problem; people are still buying cigarettes regardless of what we do about this situation. With all of the terrible amounts of chemicals substances that are already in our environment, the fact that we are making our situation even worse for ourselves by smoking is just not a smart decision at all.
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