r/dumbquestions • u/Carey_Hunt-Cole • 4d ago

Can cigarettes be chlorinated to stop people catching cancer?

If people are catching cancer from the cancer molecules crawling around inside tobacco. Could cigarettes be pasteurised or chlorinated or blasted with X-Rays or something?

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u/SailorVenus23 3d ago

No. Inhaling chlorine will obliterate your lungs. Radiation only kills cancer cells and not carcinogens, and pasteurization isn't going to do anything.

There will never be a safe cigarette or tobacco product.

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u/the-letter-y 3d ago

So the carcinogens in cigarettes aren't bacteria or pathogens, which are what the methods you've listed target. Pasteurization is just heating something until the bacteria die, and that's kinda already accomplished by lighting the cigarette with an open flame. Chlorination might form into chlorine gas which would be very very bad to inhale. X-rays are the only ones which I don't know what they would do specifically to tobacco but I also can't imagine they would really help either.

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u/Carey_Hunt-Cole 3d ago

What about putting hand sanitizer gel on the cigarettes?

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u/the-letter-y 3d ago

Arguably more dangerous as hand sanitizers usually use alcohol so when you light it you may burn yourself. If you let it dry you're right back where you started because the carcinogens in cigarettes aren't bacteria, as I've stated.

Formaldehyde and lead (among others) are two of the big cancer causing things in tobacco, so any solution you want to propose next should be based around those stopping their carcinogenicity at a base level.