Comments on: The Biodiversity of Cigarettes

By: Nikki

Nikki — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 17:40:56 +0000

Really interesting post that makes perfect sense. I’m also curious about tea leaves.

By: Where There’s Smoke, There’s Klebsiella?

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Klebsiella? — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:36:57 +0000

[…] who are the bacteria in cigarettes discussed in the last post? I don’t have time to profile them all, so we’ll briefly look at one: […]

By: Jennifer Frazer

Jennifer Frazer — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:01:48 +0000

I don’t think any bacteria could proliferate or survive in that treatment. High, fast heat — that’s how we dried mushrooms to preserved them for the herbarium. In tobacco barns, on the other hand, the leaves (which are much bigger than tea leaves and not broken into pieces) take weeks to dry. If you’ve ever driven through certain parts of the south, you’ve seen them hanging from the rafters inside in long brown rows. I seem to recall you can even smell the tobacco if you crank down your car window.

By: John Weiss

John Weiss — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:55:50 +0000

Hm, it does look like modern techniques use dryers, not Mr. Sun. But poking around, it looks like they dry them at 250 F for ~20 minutes. How far does that go toward killing any bacteria?

By: Jennifer Frazer

Jennifer Frazer — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:18:03 +0000

Well, the bacteria don’t have to survive the flame. According to the Science News article, some get trapped in the filter, probably during manufacturing. Also, when you take a drag, you’re sucking in particles from all the unburned tobacco too, which is closer to you than the burning tobacco. One of the articles speculates the bacteria could hitch rides on the smoke particles as they pass by. But bacteria can travel through air all on their own, too.

I did a little checking on the tea — and one place suggested tea leaves are dried out of the sun? But they’re also much smaller than tobacco leaves, and may be dried in a much different fashion.

By: John Weiss

John Weiss — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:09:42 +0000

Wow, that’s cool stuff. Did you ever find out how the Gulf-State Researcher found your article? (I’ve often wondered at this sort of thing. The Northfield News here in Minnesota had an op-ed, followed by an exchange in Letters to the Editor, about global warming. People from overseas were writing to attempt to shoot down the science behind global warming. One wonders how they found the NN and why they cared.)

I’m curious about tea, now, too. It’s dried out in the sun, as I’m sure you know. My guess is that that’s less conducive to bacteria. Plus I seem to recall some properties of tea that inhibit bacteria growth, but that might be wishful thinking on my part.

How do the bacteria/spores survive the lit cigarette? I’m not an expert on smoking, but I’d think that that would be a pretty good sanitizer. (So, I should think, is making tea with boiling water. Not perfect, but it probably helps!)