Nicotine's Imponderable

Discussion in 'Health & Wellness' started by Frank Sanoica, Oct 5, 2018.

  1. Frank Sanoica

    Frank Sanoica Supreme Member
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    In about the 6th. grade, my Science teacher showed us pictures which were made of a person's forearm. In an experiment, pure nicotine was daubed on a spot on this person's arm daily. In time, a cancerous skin growth appeared.

    Troubling me now for quite some time, I seek opinion, or knowledge, here, regarding a glaring imponderable:

    If nicotine causes skin cancer, how do the trans-dermal patches "quitters" utilize do their job without serious ill-effect?

    Frank
     
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  2. Don Alaska

    Don Alaska Supreme Member
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    I have never seen evidence that nicotine causes cancer. It IS quite toxic however, and when working in the South, we used to treat a lot of young college-aged kids who worked in the tobacco fields shirtless. They would suffer from severe nicotine poisoning just from being in long contact with the leaves. The ols timers always worked the fields with long sleeves, gloves, and broad-brimmed hats. The young guys would initially ridicule the oldsters for their attire in the hot sun. They learned their lesson with experience.
     
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  3. Babs Hunt

    Babs Hunt Supreme Member
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    When I was young I used to sort tobacco leaves and string them up on poles to dry and I never got sick or poisoned from doing this for hours a day. And I never saw anyone else get sick from doing this or heard of anyone who picked the leaves getting sick either back then...but then maybe we were working with organic tobacco leaves that weren't sprayed with any toxic chemicals.
     
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  4. Don Alaska

    Don Alaska Supreme Member
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    We saw it fairly often in young men, and it was said to be nicotine poisoning by the symptoms. Perhaps it is not absorbed through the skin on the hands as readily as other areas of the body. It was always the young men working shirtless in the fields that got it. I presumed the older guys were wearing gloves, but I don't know for sure that they were. These young men came in with arrhythmias and other symptoms. We also dealt with people in the vegetable fields and they were given physicals and tested for cholinesterase on a regular basis, but the symptoms of insecticide poisoning were not the same.
     
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  5. Frank Sanoica

    Frank Sanoica Supreme Member
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    A concept I've always had difficulty dealing with involves the argument that spreading TONS of insecticide over many thousands of acres of plants is essentially the same as a "drop in the ocean", as far as exposure to the individual goes.
    Frank
     
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