Plant extracts can filter out more than 15 deadly and 125 other harmful compounds from cigarette smoke, according to the study’s authors.

Smoking is widespread throughout the world. Cigarette smoke contains over 4,500 compounds, many of which are known carcinogens. These toxins are linked to a number of malignancies and other disorders. Tobacco use is the leading cause of lung cancer, as well as cancers of the oral cavity, larynx, oropharynx, hypopharynx, oesophagus, stomach, liver, pancreas, bladder, ureter, kidney, and cervix, as well as myeloid leukemia.

Tobacco-specific N-nitrosamines (TSNAs) are a class of carcinogens that induce lung, esophageal, pancreatic, and oral cancers by forming DNA adducts. In laboratory animals, the most carcinogenic TSNAs are 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK) and N’-nitrosonornicotine (NNN). NNK has been linked to cancers of the lungs and head and neck.

NNN is a strong carcinogenic TSNA that causes a variety of cancers in experimental animals, including lung, esophagus, and pancreatic tumors. The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon benzo(a)pyrene [B(a)P] is one of the main ingredients of tobacco smoke and plays an important role in the lungs. Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is a very hazardous gas that has both acute and long-term effects on people.

At the cellular level, HCN of smoke inhibits the enzyme systems required for oxidative metabolism and oxygen transport. Unsaturated oxidative formaldehyde, a toxic aldehyde found in cigarette smoke, produces edematous acute lung injury and has been associated to asthma, particularly in youngsters. Smoking not only harms smokers’ health, but it also threatens the health of nonsmokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke.

Smoking cessation is still difficult for most smokers due to nicotine’s addictive nature, despite continued legal and public health measures aimed at tobacco avoidance. Although electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) and vape devices have quickly become the new tobacco products popular among teenagers, the majority of smokers still choose traditional cigarettes.

This prompted the current study’s researchers to take additional steps to lessen traditional cigarette smoking’s harmful effects. To reduce cigarette harm, they used a type of substance called plant extract as a gas adsorbent.

They used five different plant extracts as experimental materials in this study: platycladus orientalis leaf extract, mulberry fruit extract, blueberry fruit extract, pine needle extract, and ginkgo leaf extract. These plant extract powders were crushed into 1 mm diameter particles and employed as adsorbents. Antigas mask activated carbon was broken down into 1 mm diameter particles and utilized as a control adsorbent.

Five different plant extracts and activated carbon particles were utilized as adsorbents in the outer cigarette filter in this experiment, and the weight changes of the adsorbents before and after one cigarette smoking were recorded as the adsorption capacity of one cigarette (3 replicates).

Using the ANOVA program, the difference in the emission of 15 key cigarette smoke toxicants as well as the difference in adsorption capacity were examined.

The results demonstrated that a cigarette filter containing Platycladus orientalis leaf extract and mulberry fruit extract can successfully absorb 15 primary toxicants found in mainstream cigarette smoke.

Platycladus orientalis leaf extract adsorbent particles put to the outer cigarette filter also demonstrated absorption of 125 other harmful compounds.

Methanethiol, for example, is a very poisonous molecule that can cause metabolic acidosis, convulsions, myocardial infarction, coma, and death.

Furan, a human carcinogen, can be present in heat-treated foods as well as tobacco smoke. Tobacco smoke contains phenols or phenolic chemicals (p-Cresol, 2-ethyl-Phenol, 2-methyl-Phenol, 2-methoxy-Phenol, 2,3-dimethyl-Phenol, 2,4-dimethyl-Phenol, and 2,4,6-trimethyl-Phenol) that are cardiovascular poisons, tumor co-promoters, and genotoxic.

The study concluded that plant extract had a wide range of harmful toxins adsorption properties.

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