Tobacco in cigarettes contaminated with mold

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Thursday September 21 10:57 AM ET

Tobacco in cigarettes contaminated with mold

By Mulvihill

TORONTO (Reuters Health) - If the fact that smoking increases your risk of

lung cancer isn't enough to make you kick the habit, maybe this will:

tobacco in cigarettes is contaminated with a variety of molds.

In a study of 98 cigarettes with and without filters, 63 were found to be

contaminated with a number of different types of mold, researchers reported

here on Wednesday at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and

Chemotherapy, sponsored by the American Society for Microbiology.

The investigators from the Netherlands tested cigarettes from 14 different

commercial brands as well as 7 samples of marijuana. They also analyzed the

smoke from burning cigarettes and marijuana.

The most common species of mold detected was Aspergillus fumigatus, a common

cause of infections, according to Dr. Verweij of the University Medical

Center in Nijmegen.

``If you look at all infections caused by molds, 90% are caused by

Aspergillus,'' he noted. Such molds could be hazardous to the health,

particularly those with weakened immune systems.

``Tobacco itself is a source of fungal spores and it should be recognized

that this is a source of potential infection, especially in patients with

compromised immune systems like those on chemotherapy, or who have received

organ transplants, or people with AIDS (news - web sites),'' he said.

Marijuana contained higher levels of mold than the cigarettes, but none of

the samples contain Aspergillus. Instead, the marijuana was ``highly

contaminated with Penicillium,'' Verweij said, which is not considered

harmful.

``Much to our surprise, we found that none of the smoke samples contained

any of the mold,'' Verweij told Reuters Health.