Smokeable product with reduced content of pathogens

Abstract

Smokeable products, such as tobacco, substantially free of pathogens, and methods for the preparation of such products, are disclosed.

Description

[0001]This application claims the benefit under 35 USC §119(e) from U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 60 / 880,738, filed Jan. 17, 2007, which is incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The application relates to a smokeable product in a finished form ready for smoking wherein said smokeable product has been treated in the finished form so as to be substantially free of potential pathogens.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]While the consumption of tobacco products, such as the smoking of cigarettes and cigars and the consumption of smokeless tobacco products such as snuff and chewing tobacco, has been statistically associated with a variety of diseases, including several types of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, stroke, diabetes, and cataracts, precise causal relationships remain elusive in spite of extensive research. Statistical indications extend to inadvertent consumers of tobacco products such as those who inhale so called “second-hand smoke”, but a...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0014]The present inventor has shown that cigarettes and cigars that have been sterilized using irradiation have a reduced content of bacteria as compared to untreated cigarettes and cigars. Accordingly, the present application provides a smokeable product in a finished form ready for smoking wherein said smokeable product has been treated in the finished form so as to be substantially free of potential pathogens.

[0018]In a preferred embodiment, the smokeable product is a tobacco product. One advantage of the present application is to substantially eliminate the possibility that tobacco products, at the point of consumption, contain microorganisms which may under some conditions become human pathogens or alternatively interact with other microorganisms to affect pathogenicity. This advantage is both for the protection and reassurance of the primary consumers of the tobacco products, especially smokers, and for the protection and reassurance of inadvertent consumers of tobacco consumption by-products, such as those who inhale so-called “second-hand smoke”.

[0019]Another advantage of the present application is to reduce the transmission of tobacco-borne human, animal, and plant pathogens, such as tobacco mosaic virus, by consumers of tobacco products.

[0020]Yet another advantage of the present application is to contribute to a healthier environment while minimizing any degradation of flavor or other enjoyment attributes of tobacco consumption.

Problems solved by technology

Statistical indications extend to inadvertent consumers of tobacco products such as those who inhale so called “second-hand smoke”, but again the precise way in which this inadvertent consumption leads to disease is not well understood.

As yet, little or no clear health benefit has been demonstrated by these activities, and many programs, public and private, are now underway to restrict the consumption of tobacco products, often to the consternation of tobacco consumers who continue to enjoy the flavor and other attributes of these tobacco products and to the detriment of an industry which has long supplied them.

Many naturally-occurring tobacco microorganisms are killed during conventional processing of some tobacco, especially processing which subjects the tobacco to heat.

Although gastric and other malaise is often experienced by first-time consumers of tobacco products, tobacco is not considered to be responsible for acute human disease.

Innocuous bacteria may become virulent and pathogenic when infected with viral material.

Bacteria which are innocuous when present singly or at low density may become virulent and pathogenic when they are grouped together at higher density.

While some tobacco products may, from time-to-time, be naturally free of such unwanted pathogens, comprehensive testing to determine the presence or absence of all unwanted species in tobacco is presently problematic, especially as many pathogens have probably not yet been identified.

For them, sterilization of the finished cigarette would be useless, as the microbial damage they identify—the production of toxins including nitrosamines—has already been done.

Williams (U.S. Pat. No. 6,135,121) teaches a microwave heating and drying method which may kill some microorganisms, but re-infection and re-colonization of the microwave-treated tobacco is uncontrolled during subsequent conventional processing of the subject tobacco and of tobacco products fabricated from it.

Flavoring additives may also, coincidentally, be poisonous to some microorganisms, and ash, lime, and other stabilizers can kill some microorganisms and retard the growth of others.

None of these methods can be effective in assuring the tobacco consumer, and the public at large, of a smoking product, and the resulting smoke, free of live and potentially pathogenic microorganisms.