The Use of Commercial Tobacco Harms Your Emotional Intelligence




cigarettes and emotions On November 3, 2007, the results of the newest tobacco (and cannabis) research were published by ScienceDaily. The study, conducted by the UAB Department of General Development and Educational Psychology Stress and Health Research Group (GIES) and entitled “Perceived emotional intelligence and its relation to tobacco and cannabis use among university students”, aimed to analyze, in particular, possibly existing links between tobacco smoking and the level of emotional intelligence in young individuals. In the course of the research, 133 students of psychology were studied in order to find the links.

Emotional intelligence is defined as an ability of an individual to perceive, understand, and adequately react to both his own emotions and those of other people. People with healthy and well developed emotional intelligence have a better capacity for both successful social interacting and tolerating changes in their cultural, social, and emotional world. According to the study, regularly smoking students, especially those who have started using tobacco at a young age, have lower scores in emotional intelligence tests. Therefore, they are less able to adequately comprehend and regulate their emotions, which, in turn, makes them abuse the substance even more frequently to compensate for this emotional shortage.

The results of the research show that a lower level of emotional intelligence is linked to certain components present in commercial tobacco. This link can be related to hazardous flavouring chemicals in cigarettes, which pose additional risks to smokers’ health. These toxic compounds, called alkenylbenzenes, are present in tobacco smoke in detectable amounts, as was reported by the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (the study was published under the largest and most influential scientific society in the world - the American Chemical Society).

Alkenylbenzenes are contained in tobacco additives that cigarette manufacturers put into their products to enhance their taste. Researchers aimed to analyze the amount of residual alkenylbenzenes present in cigarette smoke inhaled by users of eight leading U.S. tobacco brands. Advanced detection method was applied by the scientists, which allowed them to analyze with a high degree of accuracy the contents of the smoke in unflavoured, flavoured, and menthol cigarettes. Although different brands proved to include different amounts of hazardous chemicals, all of them had at least some of  harmful alkenylbenzenes, with an average of one to four micrograms per one gram of tobacco.

Researchers link alkenylbenzenes in commercial tobacco products to the onset of lung disease, cancer, and other serious illnesses in smokers

John Burke

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Posted on November 3, 2007 
Filed Under Smoking and Health

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