Fail: Big Tobacco Court-Ordered To Tell Only Half The TruthSayer Ji, Contributor With the latest order by a U.S. judge to force tobacco firms to admit they lied about the dangers of smoking making todays international headlines, it is easy to forget that big tobacco did not only lie, but knowingly allowed millions of smokers to suffer and die from radioisotope-contaminated tobacco poisoning with their full knowledge and consent. According to a 2009 article in the journal Isis, both external and industry scientists started researching the dangers of radioisotopes in cigarettes over 40 years ago. The first scientific paper on polonium-210, a daughter radioisotope of uranium, linking it to lung cancer was published in 1964. According to the article: The internal documents referenced above, which were made available online in 1998 by the Master Settlement Agreement, revealed that the companies suppressed publication of their own internal research to avoid heightening the publics awareness of radioactivity in cigarettes.[ii] Polonium-210 is a byproduct of the decay of uranium daughter isotopes, which, while occurring naturally in the environment, are primarily found within our soil as a result of the use of phosphate fertilizers and pollution from various industries. Industry sources include uranium mining, nuclear and coal-fired power plants. In fact, fly ash produced from coal-fired power carries 100 times more radiation into the surrounding environment than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy. This is, of course, when nuclear power plants properly contain their radioactive fuel and waste and dont release massive, irretrievable quantities of radioisotopes into the environment, as occurred in Chernobyl and Fukushima. Nuclear weapons and munitions (depleted uranium), are another well-known source of global contamination. Also, for those who believe certified organic tobacco is safer, no matter where the uranium comes from, tobacco plants selectively absorb and concentrate the byproduct of its decay, Polonium-210, to dangerous if not lethal levels. The relatively high levels found within tobacco are rather consistent over time and geographical area.[iii] A recent review published in the journal Nicotine Tobacco Research summarized this disturbing fact of history as follows: These findings indicate that the tobacco industrys relationship to their consumer base was (and still is) homicidal, in the worst, premeditated sense of the word. The motive? Profit. The industry actually knew how to mitigate the problem, but realized it would interfere with the addictive power of their product (and therefore profitability) to do so: Because of the fact that the dominant radiation risk model does not acknowledge the profoundly detrimental effects of low-dose, internalized radioisotope exposure (largely because it was developed before the discovery of DNA in the early 50s and was based on external exposures to the type of gamma-radiation associated with atomic bomb blast), the true dangers associated with Polonium-210 have been largely concealed, distorted or discounted. According to a review published in the journal Health Physics in 2010, smoking tobacco has resulted in 443,000 deaths and 5.1 million years of potential life lost among the U.S. population each year from 2000 through 2004. Furthermore, the review estimated that the associated collective radiation dose from smoking is more than 36 times that to the workers at all the U.S. nuclear power plants, U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons facilities, and crews of all the vessels in the U.S. Nuclear Navy. It is no surprise then that it has been suggested that tobacco products should carry a radiation-exposure warning label.[iv] View the Polonium abstracts from the National Library of Medicine indexed on Greenmedinfo.com. Resources [ii] iv Monique E Muggli, Jon O Ebbert, Channing Robertson, Richard D Hurt. Waking a sleeping giant: the tobacco industrys response to the polonium-210 issue. Am J Public Health. 2008 Sep ;98(9):1643-50. Epub 2008 Jul 16. PMID: 18633078 [iii] Polonium-210 and lead-210 in the terrestrial environment: a historical review. J Environ Radioact. 2011 May ;102(5):420-9. Epub 2011 Mar 5. PMID: 21377252 