Snus Help

[Mr Grandmother :)]

Hi !

I have a few questions about snus:

How long does nicotine (from snus) stay in the blood / brain / system ?

According to a Norwegian website, snus contains 2500 chemicals and 30 of them are known to cause cancer! Is this correct? I thought snus was pretty safe in contrast to dip/chew & cigarettes?

Are there links between snus and any form for cancer? Why is it regalated as a food product in Sweden?

[wadetheblade]

Could you post a link to this norwegian website with said amount of chemicals?

[Thraxy]

I don't know what website you've been reading, but 2500 different chemicals? No product in the world contains that. Did the website list which 30 cancer causing chems were in snus? If not, they're simply lying.

There is a link between snus and pancreatic cancer. As far a I know that would be the worst one. The risk of pancreatic cancer is still a lot higher for smokers than snusers.

[Mr Grandmother :)]

Could you post a link to this norwegian website with said amount of chemicals?

Yes, sure. Here it is: http://www.helsedirektoratet.no/toba.../hva_er_snus_/

You might want to use google translate, I don't have to though, I'm Norwegian

[jagmanss]

Yes, sure. Here it is: http://www.helsedirektoratet.no/toba.../hva_er_snus_/

You might want to use google translate, I don't have to though, I'm Norwegian

Looks like anti- tobacco mis- information to me.... Looks like that site is all about tobacco prevention.

[snusgetter]

Here's a translation...

What is snus?

Snuff is a smoke-free tobacco product that is placed under the lip. Snuff is made from finely ground tobacco plants which are added various substances. There are several different types of smokeless tobacco in the world, but in Norway sold the Swedish snus. Nicotine in smokeless tobacco makes it easy to get addicted. Smokeless tobacco also has several other negative health effects.

Contents of snuff

Snuff is tobacco added water, salts, flavorings and substances that will retain moisture.
Smokeless tobacco contains more than 2500 chemical substances, including nicotine. 31 substances in smokeless tobacco have been identified as carcinogens.

Tobacco-specific nitrosamines are the most important of the cancer-causing substances. Snus sold in Norway are either loose snus and portion snus.

Snuff and laws

Snuff covered by the Tobacco Act (linked). This means that the scroll is forbidden to advertise tobacco and to sell smokeless tobacco to persons under 18. The boxes should be labeled with text that tells about the health effects of snus. The EU has had a ban on the sale of smokeless tobacco since 1992. Sweden and Norway is an exception to this prohibition, Denmark has a partial exception.

Smokeless tobacco and smoking cessation

There is a discussion on how the overall health effects of tobacco can be reduced. Some claim that snus should be recommended by health authorities as an alternative to smoking. Directorate of Health does not recommend smokeless tobacco as an aid to smoking cessation. This is due first and foremost, that snus is documented carcinogenic and easy to get addicted.

[Posted: 25.11.2008] [Last modified: 11/08/2010]

This is more like a sound-bite piece than actual reporting ...
there is no substantiation of the claims mentioned.

Norwegian National Enquirer??

[lxskllr]

The only cancer even remotely associated with snus is pancreatic cancer, and I've backpedaled a bit from telling people that. It's come to my attention that the negative results in that study were cherry picked for the worst outcome. Also, there's potential constraining factors that I don't think were sufficiently accounted for. Until the study has been replicated with tighter controls, I don't think it warrants more than an "interesting" response. An acknowledgment that a study was indeed done, but is far too inconclusive to give much weight to.

Chemical content? That number seems very high to me, but even if accurate, it doesn't matter. Our lives are filled with chemicals of all kinds. Some beneficial, some neutral, and some negative. Any statement of numbers without specifying content is just playing off people's fears, and trying to get them to make a connection that isn't there.

TSNAs are indeed bad for health, but the numbers are extremely low in Swedish snus. Prepared meat, scotch, and backyard grilling also have nitrates, and are bad for you to some extent. It comes down to how much you enjoy what you do, and how much it's worth. Would you trade in life's pleasures to decrease your odds of getting sick by fractions of a percentage point? I wouldn't. Everyone's going to die. Heart attack, cancer, hit by a car, falling off a ladder... The ways to die are endless, and you'll definitely pick one eventually. You might as well enjoy your short time here.

Welcome to SnusOn!

[GN Tobacco Sweden AB]

Hi !

I have a few questions about snus:

How long does nicotine (from snus) stay in the blood / brain / system ?

According to a Norwegian website, snus contains 2500 chemicals and 30 of them are known to cause cancer! Is this correct? I thought snus was pretty safe in contrast to dip/chew & cigarettes?

Are there links between snus and any form for cancer? Why is it regalated as a food product in Sweden?

It is not tru , to be honest it is lie. Snus contains Water , salt , Tobacco and food ingridients now if Water ar salt cause canser i was not aware of That . Norwegian Sientists you say ??? When fox want to Catch rabbit and does not succed fox says :" it was not Good rabit - to little meet in it".

[shikitohno]

Yeah, unless the aromer ingredient is an umbrella term with 2493 ingredients hidden under it, I'd be inclined to call bs on this site. Each tin comes with an ingredients list on the side. It's usually only 7-9 ingredients long, and lists tobacco, water, alkalising agents (nicotine is absorbed better at higher pH), salt, stabilising agents, and flavourings including smoke flavour. E422 is glycerol, E1520 is propylene glycol, and E500 is sodium carbonate. E422 and E1520 are stabilising agents which preserve the proper moisture levels in snus, so it doesn't dry out in a week if you don't use the whole tin, and E500 serves to bump the pH up slightly so that snusers can more easily absorb the nicotine in it. The only way I can see them being able to claim there are 2500 chemicals in snus is if they are taking each ingredient and breaking it down into all the individual chemicals which make it up. Tobacco alone will probably give you an ungodly number of chemicals if you look at it in this fashion, but so will broccoli, and I don't intend to give up either. Without some sort of study to back up there claims, this number is useless. I can go edit the wikipedia article on snus to say it'll make you crap out 48 pistachio muffins a day, but it hardly makes it true unless I've got evidence to back it up.

This site seems like one of those anti-dip sites that go on about how if you use dip you'll lose you lower jaw to mouth cancer; they overplay isolated incidents, neglect the fact that the sugar content in dip (sometimes reaching 50-60% by weight as I recall), and completely overlook the fact that smokers are several times more likely to develop oral cancer than users of oral tobacco. The study which lxskllr mentioned gave the conclusion that using snus doubles your risk of developing pancreatic cancer all the way up to 8 in 100,000, if we read the same study. A study conducted across Scandinavia with thousands of snuser, which I believe followed them over the course of several decades, found one incidence of oral cancer which could be attributed to snus use. It was a man in his 90s who had been using snus all day, every day for over 60 years and always put it in the same spot. Even in that case, he was just in the early stages of developing it.

As for why it's regulated as a food substance, your guess is as good as mine. If I had to make an attempt, it seems logical to me that they would do so as snusers are much more likely to regularly swallow some snus than users of other varieties of tobacco available in Sweden. You don't want people constantly swallowing stuff they would consciously swallow otherwise, so it makes sense to treat it as a food substance in that regard.

[NewYork]

We are all looking for a "safer" way to get our drug fix. We are all addicts here with health consciousness. I too would also like to know if there were negatives about snus I did not know about but, here is the bottom line. It is safer than smoking, it is safer than dipping or chewing. Obviously it would be safer not to use ANY tobacco but, if you MUST use tobacco (like me) you might as well use steam pasteurized swedish snus as it is most likely the safest. Enjoy snus and try not to pick up any new addictions. I have battled many addictions and tobacco or nicotine is by far one of the most difficult to conquer yet lucky enough comes in a form that is not nearly as damaging. BTW I have yet to read about a "healthy" soda but I do enjoy a pepsi on regular occasion.

[EricHill78]

Mr. Grandmother??? Lmao that is the coolest user name ever! The smiley is icing.

+1

[Kaplan]

There is a link between snus and pancreatic cancer. As far a I know that would be the worst one. The risk of pancreatic cancer is still a lot higher for smokers than snusers.

I hear that a lot on this site, but there in fact doesn't seem to be any evidence of a link. The research is very conflicted, and thus meaningless. I'm surprised every time I hear someone say that on this site, and more surprised that it goes unchallenged.

Here's one link, which you could certainly claim is biased, but see if you can prove them wrong, based on current research. Besides someone had posted a link here a few months ago to a very extensive report on snus and health, and it went into even more details that denied any connection.

http://www.swedishmatch.com/en/Snus-...reatic-cancer/