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Friday, October 08, 2010

Heavy metals found in China tobacco

Toronto Sun: China has more than 320 million smokers and a million Chinese in the country die each year from tobacco-related illnesses. Smoking has been causally linked to hypertension, stroke, diabetes, cancer, heart and respiratory diseases, among others.

China has the world's largest smoking population and is also the biggest producer of tobacco, manufacturing 2.16 trillion cigarettes in 2007, according to the Tobacco Atlas.

O'Connor and colleagues analysed 78 varieties of popular Chinese cigarette brands and found significantly elevated levels of heavy metals, with some containing three times the levels of lead, cadmium and arsenic compared with Canadian cigarettes. Read more...

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