Cigarettes contaminated with bacteria

In commercially available cigarettes, researchers have sometimes hundreds of dangerous bacteria found. The question is, where the germs came from and if they can harm smokers.

As many a smoker should take the pleasure of inhaling: Cigarettes contain hundreds of different types of bacteria. The analysis shows the four major manufacturers - including products from Camel, Marlboro, Kool and Lucky Strike. Among the myriad germs cavort many pathogens.


"Commercially available cigarettes were jam-packed with bacteria - as we had expected," says study leader Amy Sapkota from the University of Maryland. "But we did not expect to find so many that cause human diseases." Together with our French colleagues analyzed the medical examiner environmental tobacco samples to the entire genetic material derived from bacteria. So far had been mostly content of the cigarettes tested for cancer-causing chemicals or other fine particles, the researchers explain in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. "


All products tested equally contaminated with germs
All cigarettes tested contained potentially pathogenic bacteria. 90 percent of the samples contained the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa that causes ten percent of all infections in patients in U.S. hospitals. Particularly frequently, the researchers hit on the person responsible for lung and blood infections Acinetobacter or Klebsiella and Clostridium bacteria that cause both also lung infections.

Next, do Sapkota and colleagues examine the means of dissemination of the bacteria found in more detail. "If these organisms survive the smoking process - and we assume that the can - then they could contribute to infections and chronic diseases of both smokers and passive smokers, says Sapkota. So could possibly explain the observation that the airways of smokers have more pathogens, according to a release by the University of Maryland.

The question of the origin of the bacteria
On how the germs at all caught up in the cigarettes, the researchers provide a thesis. They refer to results of the microbiologists Lennart Larsson of Lund University and his work appeared in 2008 on bacteria in tobacco plants. Larsson had some of the same microbes found in the tobacco leaves, which now also processed in tobacco showed up. It is therefore possible that the bacteria enter early in the production process in the cigarettes, Sapkota and colleagues write. Moreover, it looks as if some bacteria producing the Glimmstengel easily survive.