What Is Tar in Cigarettes?

If you’ve been smoking cigarettes for a long time, then you already know how much smoke you release whenever you light one cigarette. Each time you puff a cigarette, it produces smoke that contains a bunch of chemicals. Many of these chemicals then enter your body, which are mostly known to be dangerous to your overall health.

Some examples of chemicals that cigarette smoke possesses include carbon monoxide, ammonia, formaldehyde, hexamine, lead, and butane. When you gradually take in these chemicals, they can slowly cause the development of different illnesses in the lungs, heart, and other vital organs.

Another chemical found in tobacco smoke is tar. It is a sticky brown substance generated by burning tobacco. This chemical is similar to the thick, sticky liquid that is attained through distilling coal, wood, or peat. Now, given the health effects of cigarette smoke chemicals on your body, you must certainly know more about tar and why it is essential in cigarettes.

What Is Tar Used for in Cigarettes?

Tobacco plants generally produce many chemicals whenever they are consumed.

Nicotine, for instance, is one of the chemicals you can get whenever you chew or smoke tobacco products. It is a highly addictive substance that lets you feel relaxed and calm temporarily. It even allows you to feel alert and concentrate better. Since its effects are short-lived, you are somehow pushed to smoke another cigarette until you feel satisfied with its nicotine hits.

Another chemical found in tobacco plants is tar. Contrary to popular belief, tar is a chemical that is only released whenever you burn tobacco products. Hence, smokeless tobacco products like chewing tobacco, snuff, and others are known for being less harmful than cigarettes due to the absence of tar. NativeSmokes4Less offers smokeless tobacco products and can ship them wherever you are in Canada.

So, what is tar exactly?

Tar is the sticky brown substance that is produced whenever your cigarette is lit. The combustion process, or the act of lighting a cigarette, triggers the release of the said substance. It is considered to be one of the most toxic chemicals you can get whenever you smoke a cigarette.

Every time you smoke a cigarette, a huge amount of tar enters your body. It then damages your lungs through biochemical and mechanical processes. It likewise damages your gums, desensitizes your taste buds, and blackens your teeth. Even your fingers can turn yellow-brown as you continue smoking.

What Is the Purpose of Tar in Cigarettes?

Believe it or not, smoking a stick of cigarette can already produce more than 7,000 chemicals in the air. At least 69 of these chemicals, unfortunately, are known to cause lung diseases, heart illnesses, and other harmful effects on your body.

One of these chemicals is tar.

Tar is a resinous, combusted particular matter produced when burning tobacco and other plant material. You usually get this chemical whenever you smoke tobacco products like cigarettes and even cigars. As you smoke, the combustion process of tobacco generates tar and other chemicals. They then enter your body through the lungs and damage them slowly.

How does tar work inside your body?

Whenever it enters your body, it latches into your lungs, coating the cilia. Cilia are minuscule hair-like structures in your lungs. They are meant to move mucus, germs, and other substances up toward your mouth so you can easily sneeze or cough them out. Since tar coats these key parts, they eventually cease functioning until they die. This then leads to lung cancer since the toxic particles from your cigarette smoke can freely enter your alveoli or tiny branches of air tubes in your lungs. 

As toxic chemicals from the smoke infiltrate your alveoli, the gas exchange during respiration or breathing in and breathing out process gets compromised, causing you to experience breathing issues.

The way tar works inside your body is not intentional. Rather, it is a byproduct of smoking cigarettes. Hence, it’s recommended to quit smoking tobacco products to protect your body.

What Is Tar in Cigarettes Made Of?

When talking about cigarette smoke, it’s impossible not to mention tar since it is one of the chemicals produced whenever you smoke a cigarette.

Tar is a total particular matter that you inhale whenever you draw a lighted cigarette. In condensate form, it resembles a sticky brown substance that can stain your fingers and make your teeth yellow-brown. Take note that all cigarettes, no matter their variants, produce tar. They only differ in amounts of the substance being produced whenever you light one.

Historically, cigarette manufacturers incorporate huge amounts of tobacco plants into their products. Therefore, you won’t see any differences in cigarettes when you browse them before. But when different medical studies discovered the dangers of tar, nicotine, and carbon monoxide, cigarette makers started creating other versions of cigarettes, advertising and selling light or mild smokes.

Since 2003, however, cigarette makers have been prohibited from describing their products as being less harmful. This covers the promotion of light or mild cigarettes as authorities find this tactic somehow deceiving since they still release tar during combustion. 

Additionally, cigarette makers are then required to submit a list of all ingredients used in manufacturing cigarettes, together with toxicological data on their overall health and addictive effects.

One thing that makes tar dangerous is it is comprised of condensable hydrocarbons, which cover oxygen-containing 1- to 5-ring aromatic and complex polyaromatic hydrocarbons. It also has acids and phenols, making this substance even more dangerous, especially when it enters your body.

What Is Tar Found in Other Than Cigarettes?

Different anti-smoking campaigns have pointed out how dangerous tar is, especially once it enters your body. However, this particular substance is not only produced from the mainstream smoke of cigarettes. Tar can also be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, and peat through destructive distillation.

To date, there are three types of tar depending on their source of origin.

1. Coal Tar: Coal tar is a byproduct of destructive distillation of coal or coal gas manufacturing. This heavy, strong-smelling, and black substance possesses high specific gravities, viscosities, and adhesive properties. It is typically comprised of true pitch (72%), heavy oils (15%), medium oil (6%), light oil (6%), moisture and ash (1%), and other impurities. Coal tar is typically used for coating wooden poles, sleepers, iron poles, latrine walls, and other surfaces.
2. Wood Tar: Wood tar is obtained through the destructive distillation of resinous wood (such as pine). It is a potent preservative due to its creosote content. Upon further distillation, wood tar yields wood creosote. The residue left after distillation is then known as pitch. 
3. Mineral Tar: Mineral tar is derived from the distillation of bituminous shales. Some notable examples include tarmac, tar paving, and tar macadam. Tarmac is composed of ironstone slag impregnated with tar oils. Its impervious nature makes it an ideal choice for inroad pavement. Alternatively, tar paving is a combination of limestone and coal tar. Before its application, the mixture undergoes heating to enhance its properties. Ultimately, tar macadam utilizes soft rock materials heated in a furnace and subsequently mixed with boiling coal tar, pitch, and creosote oil. The mixture is applied to the road surface and rolled to achieve a smooth and durable surface.

These varying tar types are composed of different chemicals from cigarette tar. Regardless of its type, tar should be handled properly since it is typically known to be carcinogenic. Prolonged exposure to tar can irritate your skin, eyes, and respiratory systems. Proper precautions are likewise necessary when dealing with any type and form of tar.

How to Reduce Tar in Cigarettes

As mentioned earlier, tobacco smoke is comprised of thousands of chemicals. These chemicals include poisonous gases, toxic metals, and chemicals, which are known to cause lung cancer and many more diseases in the heart, lungs, and other vital organs. 

As you inhale the chemicals in cigarette smoke, they can gradually yield great damage to your body as they are known to destroy various important cells. Some of the cancer-causing chemicals in cigarettes include benzene, beryllium, chromium, cadmium, arsenic, polonium-21, formaldehyde, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. A number of these chemicals from tar, which is the total particulate matter generated by tobacco whenever it undergoes the combustion process.

When these chemicals get into your body, they slowly damage your DNA, especially those parts that protect your cells from being cancerous. They can even stop your cells from repairing compromised DNA, increasing your chances of developing cancer. 

Additionally, tobacco smoke chemicals damage your cilia. Cilia, as discussed earlier, keeps your airways free from dirt and infections. The infiltration of the chemicals causes damage to your respiratory system.

Lastly, cigarette smoke chemicals affect how your immune system functions. They can likewise cause inflammation, making you more vulnerable to illnesses. 

Cigarette manufacturers are aware of the dangers caused by tobacco smoke chemicals, including those coming from tar. Hence, they have implemented some changes to their cigarettes over the past few decades, making sure they become less harmful to cigarette users.

• Addition of cigarette filters: The proliferation of medical evidence that points to cigarette smoke as the source of lung illnesses, heart disease, and many more somehow forced cigarette makers to find ways to make their products “less harmful” and “safer.” One of the ways they have implemented to continue selling cigarettes is to add filters to the whole composition of their products. By adding filters, the amount of tar and other chemicals smokers inhale can be reduced. Research, however, still shows that the compounds from cigarettes can get through the filters, regardless of their materials and perceived effectiveness in filtering chemicals.
• Producing low-tar cigarettes: Low-tar cigarettes are a type of cigarette known for producing less tobacco tar than regular cigarettes, especially when smoked. These cigarettes are made with filters that feature more ventilation holes than those found in regular cigarettes. The purpose of adding holes is to bring in more air and further dilute the tobacco smoke. The dilution causes artificially low measurements of tar, which are done by testing the cigarettes with a machine. Low-tar cigarettes may also incorporate lower density of tobacco as well as come in a smaller circumference, giving birth to slim cigarettes.

Despite these added measures and processes by cigarette manufacturers, smokers are known to be exposed to the same amount of tar and other chemicals as in regular cigarettes when they use these products. Smoking filtered and low-tar cigarettes won’t keep them safe from cancer or other diseases. 

The best way to reduce tar exposure from cigarettes is to stop smoking. You can opt for nicotine replacement therapy or counselling to start your smoking cessation journey.

Is Tar in Cigarettes the Same as Road Tar?

Cigarettes have been existing for a long time, giving users their much-desired mood relief whenever they are down. They likewise relax people who are stressed in life or encourage groups to have fun whenever they are in social gatherings like parties or celebrations.

All in all, cigarettes have been a part of many people’s lives, allowing them to feel things that can somehow boost their mood, social battery, and many more.

But the effects of cigarettes have been nothing but harmful, especially for those who have been smoking for a long time. Some people may attribute the health risks of the products to nicotine, but this particular chemical only causes smokers to be addicted to the soothing effects of the smokes. It is tar and other carcinogens that cause harm to smokers.

Tar, or total aerosol residue, is normally defined as the weight of the solids gained after water and nicotine have been removed. Naturally, it is produced by cigarettes and other tobacco products whenever you smoke one. The combustion process converts the tobacco components into smoke, which then contains tar and other chemicals that enter your body. The smoke likewise affects non-smokers, exposing them to chemicals that can likewise harm their respective body systems.

Now, one thing you must know is that cigarette tar is different from the tar used when building and constructing roads. 

This misconception comes from non-English speaking governments that have somehow translated tar by their own word for the materials used in road construction, such as ‘Teer’ in German, ‘goudron’ in French, and ‘alquitrán’ in Spanish. 

Additionally, both cigarette tar and road tar pose risks to one’s health, allowing other people to think that they are similar. Road tar affects you if you touch or inhale it directly for a long time. Cigarette tar, on the other hand, only affects you through the inhalation of tobacco smoke.

Although cigarette tar differs from road tar, it’s evident that cigarette smoking can cause more harm than good to your body. Hence, it’s better to quit smoking as soon as possible.

Tar in Cigarettes Effects on the Body

As you light and puff a cigarette, it produces smoke that contains thousands of chemicals. Out of these chemicals, almost 70 of them can cause cancer, making smoking a dangerous habit.

One of the chemicals that enter your body every time you smoke is tar.

Tar is a chemical substance cigarettes produce whenever they undergo the combustion process. It contains most of the cancer-causing chemicals found in tobacco smoke. As you inhale the smoke, the tar forms a sticky layer on the inside of your lungs. This layer then damages your lungs and deteriorates their internal composition, causing lung cancer, emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD, and other lung issues. Inhaling cigarette smoke likewise causes cancers of the mouth and throat.

This sticky-brown substance can likewise stain your fingers. It can even stick to your teeth, leading to discolouration and stubborn stains.

Regardless of the type of cigarettes you smoke, they all produce tar and other harmful chemicals. Even those that are advertised to yield lower tar levels and lower nicotine content could still harm your body the same way as those by regular manufactured cigarettes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is tar in cigarettes?

Tar in cigarettes is a sticky brown residue that is generated whenever tobacco burns. It comprises harmful chemicals that are mostly carcinogenic and toxic.

What is worse in cigarettes, tar or nicotine?

Between tar and nicotine, the former is known to be worse in terms of physical health effects. Tar causes physical harm as it puts you at risk of developing lung cancer and other lung issues. Nicotine, alternatively, is a highly addictive substance that keeps you smoking and using tobacco products. 

Why tar is used in cigarette?

Tar is not added to cigarettes. Instead, it is naturally produced by tobacco whenever it burns. Once you light a cigarette up, it somehow enhances its flavour. However, it makes the cigarette much more harmful to your overall health.

How much tar is in one cigarette?

The amount of tar in a cigarette depends heavily on its type. Most cigarettes contain 7 to 22mg of tar. While low-tar cigarettes claim to have less tar content, they still expose users like you to the tar’s harmful health effects. 

What does tar do to your body?

As tar enters your body, it coats key parts of your lungs, reducing their function and damaging your respiratory system over time. Since it contains many harmful cancer-causing chemicals, it then increases your chances of developing cancer, heart disease, and chronic respiratory conditions. Tar can likewise stain your teeth, cause bad breath, and contribute to gum disease.

Summary

Tar in cigarettes is a by-product of lighting them up. As you smoke, it enters your body alongside other harmful chemicals that pose health risks to your body. When you continue smoking for a long time, these chemicals put you at an increased risk of developing different types of cancers and illnesses.

To keep yourself safe from tar and other chemicals from cigarette smoke, it would be the best time to quit smoking and find alternative ways of consuming nicotine if you still rely on it. Nicotine replacement therapies like nicotine gums and nicotine lozenges are available for you to gradually decrease your tobacco dependence and nicotine reliance. You can also opt for nicotine pouches, which are known to be less harmful than traditional tobacco products.