540 



Subcommittee and denied thai smoking poses a health risk. Smoking, one 

 unenlightened CEO contended, is no more dangerous than eating twinkles. 



The reality is smoking, unlike eating twinkles, kills a half a million smokers 

 annually and drags 3,000 non-smokers to their graves through second-hand smoke. 

 Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Smokers 

 annually add $100 billion to the national price tag for health care. An individual 

 smoker will pay about $6,000 in extra medical costs over a lifetime. Smoking costs 

 businesses $47 billion in 1990 in lost productivity, and all those statistics combined 

 do not even begin to address the other health hazards of smoking, including fires 

 caused by smokers, and increases in breast cancer rates for women. 



Now we are confronted with the knowledge that tobacco companies have been 

 adding chemicals to their cigarettes. Recently, National Public Radio reported that it 

 had obtained a list-heretofore top secret-of 700 chemicals added to cigarettes. At 

 least two of the chemicals have been shown to cause liver damage and convulsions 

 when tested on animals; and two of the chemicals are considered too dangerous to 

 be allowed in municipal waste dumps. The list is considered a trade secret and is 

 provided only to the Centers For Disease Control and^on a restricted basis, to a few 

 Members of Congress. 



Most of the chemicals on the list are well-known food additives. But there are 

 six chemicals that are not food additives, but deadly chemicals that we know nothing 

 about. Just how much Methoprene, "an active ingredient of a registered pesticide," 

 does a human need to inhale before causing critical damage to their body? What are 

 the cancer rates for long-term exposure to Dimethyltetrahydrobenzofuranone "a 



