Cigarettes - Everything You Wanted To Know

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) August 23, 2009 -- Not all cigarettes are the same, because smokers, in different countries around the world, have different requirements there are many varieties in strengths and tastes produced by the various tobacco companies.

What goes into the manufacture of a cigarette?

Although, to the naked eye, all cigarettes appear to look similar, there are many variations in both the design and mix of tobaccos, including king size, superkings, lights, low tar and menthol cigarettes.

The cigarette itself consists of the tobacco section and the filter section. The lengths can vary depending on the brand and affect the taste, strengths and amounts of smoke. The filters differ depending on the amount of smoke that is yielded by the cigarette, as does the paper.

The tobacco includes tobacco lamina (the flat part of the tobacco leaf), tobacco stem (midribs of the leaf), and expanded lamina. Flavorings and food type ingredients are added to some brands of cigarettes, often American style blends, to compliment the natural tobacco taste, keep the tobacco moist, replace some of the sugar lost in curing and give the many differing brands their own characteristic flavors and aromas. Other ingredients act as binders or filters, control moisture, and protect against degradation. At each stage there is strict quality control to ensure that the tastes remain constant long term.

Nicotine is not added in the manufacture of cigarettes but occurs naturally in all varieties of tobacco plants.

Filters are attached to the cigarette to trap and reduce the amounts of tar and nicotine in the smoke and are made mainly from cellulose acetate fibers, a derivative of wood pulp, known as tow. The fibers are bonded together with a hardening agent, triacetin plasticizer, which helps the filter to keep its shape. The filter is wrapped in paper and sealed with adhesive plus coatings to prevent it sticking to the lips. Sometimes charcoal is added to filters. Filter tips are biodegradable over a period of between a month and three years, depending on the environmental conditions. Although there is ongoing research, currently there is no known practical method of making consumer-acceptable filters that would degrade so quickly that they would not cause short-term littering problems. The best way to reduce potential litter problems is for consumers to dispose of filters and cigarette packs in a responsible way.

What happens when you smoke a cigarette?

It is the burning of the cigarette that produces tar. When any item burns, it produces tiny particles mixed with gases – this is smoke. A cigarette filter traps some of these particles.

When a smoker puffs on a cigarette, smoke, including both fine particles and gases, is sucked through the cigarette. The gases pass through the filter, and some of the particles are trapped in it. It is these particles, minus nicotine and water that is called tar.

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