Philip Morris and others failed to publish internal studies into lethal substance
Jump to full article: The Independent (uk), 2008-08-24
Author: Andy Rowell
Intro: Some of the world's biggest tobacco firms researched the lethal radioactive substance polonium - present in cigarettes - over a 40-year period but never published the results, according to a new scientific article.
Experts have examined more than 1,500 internal documents from tobacco companies.
Polonium 210 is known to cause lung cancers in animals and studies suggest it is responsible for 1 per cent of all lung cancers - equivalent to 11,700 deaths globally - each year in the US.
It is also the substance that poisoned the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.
Yet tobacco companies, while attempting but failing to remove the substance from their products, have kept quiet about their research, experts say.
One of the documents - all of which were made public through legal actions - said publication would be "waking a sleeping giant". The authors of the article, published in the September edition of American Journal of Public Health, also say tobacco companies feared possible litigation.
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Quotes from this article:
The World Health Organisation is trying to determine which constituents of tobacco smoke are most important in diseases including lung cancer, but as yet have not concluded polonium 210 is a priority constituent.
Unidentified spokeswoman for British American Tobacco.
[Publication of the tobacco industry's polonium 210 research] has the potential to wake a sleeping giant.
Unidentified 1978 tobacco industry internal document.
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