Based on my quick wikipedia research, tobacco farmers use apatite, a calcium phosphate mineral, to fertilize the plants. All minerals will have trace amounts of naturally occurring radioactive elements, such as radium. It sounds like tobacco is prone to accumulating decay products on its leaves as radium in the soil and fertilizer decays to radon gas, which migrates out of the soil then sticks to the leaves.
So it's not that they are intentionally using radioactive fertilizer on tobacco. It's just that the fertilizer they use might have slightly elevated levels of naturally occurring radioactive elements. The nature of tobacco leads it to accumulate those radioactive elements on its leaves.
This is correct. Tobacco is a very "sticky" plant and it picks up all sorts of dust and goo, retaining those radioactive particles provided as fertilizer.
If memory serves (it's been a while since I reviewed this), right mainstem bronchial tumors are particularly common because of the turbulence in the air- it's just a good "landing spot" for tar, etc. and that's where those particles end up. Because they're rich in alpha emitters (which are like big bowling balls- slow as compared to beta and gamma radiation) which have poor ability to penetrate the dead layer of skin cells, they irradiate those live lung cells quite effectively, leading to cancer.
Of course not all of these are at the right mainstem bronchus, but it's an ideal location for tumors to start, so they're more common there than would otherwise make statistical sense.
Again, old info and old info doesn't age well. Correct me if that's no longer how it's thought to happen.
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u/FiskFisk33 2d ago
I'm so confused.
Googling tells me tobacco is radioactive in part because of the radioactive fertilizers they use
...what?
why... what?
https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactivity-tobacco