The Insane Cigarettes that used Asbestos?!

hey all's tokuya here with the history of everything podcast youtube channel before things begin i want you to make sure to go down and hit the link in the description so you can join our history discord server it's got around 7 000 members and we're always looking for more people to join in to talk have fun and enjoy the memes when it comes to history enjoy the video and make sure to like comment and subscribe right now if you or a loved one has been diagnosed with mesothelioma you may be entitled to financial compensation how many of you have that same phrase stuck in your head because of law commercials literally decades ago that would play constantly on the television i mean it would probably take an entire other video to explain but the prevalence of that memory just shows how common asbestos and the problems related to asbestos were many years ago as a material asbestos was used for decades for its ability to strengthen and fireproof materials this included concrete bricks fireplace cement pipes insulation essentially everything you possibly could want the only problem was it was uh later found to be highly carcinogenic it would directly lead to something called mesothelioma which was a highly aggressive form of cancer that is only found to be caused by exposure to asbestos now this is bad enough when you're working in an industry where you're going to be exposed to the material where you know you're going to be working around it but what if you were breathing it in directly like on purpose well that is where these puppies come in from 1952 to 1956 the lore lord tobacco company sold a new product called kentz a cigarette that used special micronite filters that were advised as increasing the experience and safety of smoking by removing any harmful toxins that were found in the tobacco you see this was back during a time in the 1950s when there was a little bit of a health scare that was going on when it came to cigarettes and tobacco products as a causal link had been discovered between smoking and or tobacco products and cancer and so very quickly tobacco companies went and tried to roll out new products that were going to be able to calm the jitters of people who were you know concerned that these things that they were smoking were going to give them all kinds of horrible illnesses they needed something better you know otherwise the profits of the company were going to get hurt the concern of course was far more about money less so about the people and this product right here is the absolute perfect example of it named after one of its company's presidents herbert a kent the lorellard company touted the blatant superiority of the micronite filter this was going to be a blend of cotton acetate crepe paper and the most important ingredient in all of this crocidolite asbestos sometimes called african or bolivian blue asbestos because of its bluish tint now the risk of deadly lung diseases for heavily exposed asbestos miners and plant workers was already very well documented but asbestos was also known as a material that could very easily trap gases and other minute particles lorellard actually learned this from the army whose chemical core was using cracitalite for their gas mask because again it could stop these particles so the company launches kent at a press conference in new york's waldorf astoria touting the micronite filter as the greatest health protection in cigarette history it wasn't actually great but what they were doing was playing on the public's perception of healthcare and technology post-world war ii which was a time of immense advancement kent ads would tell a glamorous if very vague backstory about how they had a quest for a new filter that ended in an atomic energy plant where the makers of kent found a material that was being used to filter air of microscopic impurities what is micronite another ad asked well it's a pure dust-free completely harmless material oh dear god they literally did announce it as completely harmless that is so safe so effective it is actually used to help filter the air in operating rooms of leading hospitals i mean this company was doing everything that it possibly could to tell people just how healthy and good its cigarettes were in comparison their marketing blitz included things like putting ads in medical journals they would send gift boxes to physicians along with letters that would ask the doctors to please talk up the superiority of their cigarettes and how much safer they were for patients who were considering cutting smoking from their lives now mind you all of this is terrible but you're probably asking me now hey stack it was the 50s i mean did they really know what was going on did they really think that it was all that bad the technology wasn't exactly there yet right well that's the thing there was a series of internal documents that highlight lorelai's anxieties that its customers were actually still breathing asbestos an april 1954 letter from lorellard's research director to the company's president states that researchers had found traces of mineral fiber in the smoke with a direct quote from it saying we are embarked upon a program of attempting to work out a method for the elimination of the presence of such fibers meaning they knew that it was there and that customers were still going to be breathing in asbestos that very september an official sent a memo discussing the need quote to find a way of anchoring asbestos all efforts are to be exerted to solve the asbestos dust in kent smoke problem in another memo simply two months later it was stated by the president of h v the company that made the filters it is lorelord's belief that asbestos must be eliminated from the kent cigarette as soon as possible because of a whispering campaign started by their competitors of the harmful effect of asbestos and so you look at that quote and you realize hey the worries that they were having weren't related to people's health it was actually hey our competitors are saying bad things about our cigarettes that could turn the public against us we need to fix this because you know it wasn't people's lives that were the problem here now was it and so as a result of this hnv would discontinue their research projects to fix the anchoring of the asbestos and instead have to devote all resources to trying to eliminate the asbestos itself you know by using filters that don't contain asbestos but the worst part about all of this is that lorlard continued to make these cigarettes for an additional 16 months even though they knew what was going on and even after they stopped making the cigarettes they continued to sell them just so that they could get rid of as much of their stock as they possibly could because i mean what it's not like the company wants to lose out on any profit or anything right during this period approximately 13 billion kent cigarettes were sold to consumers and as for the number of people that were hurt by them we more than likely will never actually know but that being said that is the end of today's video thank you to everyone who has watched and make sure to put your comments down in the comment section below letting me know what it is that i should cover next please make sure to like to comment to subscribe if you haven't already and also remember to join discord because there is a link down in the description where you can go and join my history server where we can talk more history and have some more fun thank you everyone and goodbye

Channel: History of Everything Podcast

Views: 63,337

Keywords: history, products, industry, story, education

Id: XhcoQhgj5WU

Length: 6min 53sec (413 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 28 2022