What is 'hydrogen cyanide'?

What is 'hydrogen cyanide'?

Linda Hyder Ferry (Associate Professor, Preventive Medicine and Family Medicine, Loma Linda University School of Medicine) gives expert video advice on: What is 'secondhand smoke'?; Is secondhand smoke worse from cigarettes or cigars?; What are the dangers of secondhand smoke? and more...

Hydrogen cyanide is a chemical that is released in cigarette smoke when it is burned that is a poison. Most people think of cyanide as poisoning, because we know can kill someone in a few minutes when ingested or injected into their bloodstream. It's used as pesticides and rodenticides to get rid of pests very quickly. Cyanide is a product that can be found to high levels in cigarette smoke, not high enough to kill you on the spot from a poison but high enough to accumulate over time to where it is measurable in a human smoker and just adds to that load of dangerous chemicals, along with carcinogens in the physiology of someone who chronically breathes in and ingests cigarette smoke.