Quote Originally Posted by sarah louise
Well they don't actually go and add polonium to the soil intentionally, any crop grown with a fertilizer derived from calcium phosphate ore is susceptible to polonium contamination. :hippy:
Thanks. I looked it up and found that there is little to support the theory that polonium causes cancer in many tobacco smokers.

Don't you think that there may be something to it, though, since lung cancer became a problem for smokers after those fertilizers were introduced to the tobacco fields? People smoked for hundreds of years before that, and you don't hear much about lung cancer in those times.

Here's some info, but I can't verify their scientific accuracy, and neither can they in most cases:

Lung cancer rates increased significantly during most of the 1900's (6). Although it has been conclusively proven that tobacco causes lung cancer, researchers have not established that the carcinogens in tobacco are present in high enough levels to explain the numbers of cancer cases. Its no coincidence that between 1938 and 1960, the level of polonium 210 in American tobacco tripled commensurate with the increased use of chemical fertilizers and Persistent Organic Pollutant (POP) accumulation.

About the only problem with Mr. Malmo-Levine's article is that the rise of the use of Calcium Phosphate Fertilizer among Mexican, South American and Hawaiian Marijuana growers is starting to cause a rise in Lung Cancer among Marijuana users that correlates with the statistical increase of CPF's use. But he makes an interesting point, because prior to the increased use of CPF by "pot growers", Lung Cancer from it's use was almost non-existent. This 'non-scientific' observation does make a serious point about Polonium's contribution
Radioactive Polonium in Tobacco