The multi-trillion dollar serial killer.

By Tom Dennen

"Two adverts warning cigarette smoke contains the radioactive substance that killed Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko has (sic) been pulled from a health campaign, " said the British news giant BBC.

The campaign also includes posters and beer mats, it said.

"Some mats, which were sent out early to pubs in the West Country, saying 'Where do you find polonium? In cigarettes!'...Caused some concern locally, and have now also been withdrawn."

The Department of Health said it was "inappropriate" to run the ads that show cigarettes contain polonium 210, but did not explain what they meant by 'inappropriate'.

(A later announcement said, The Department of Health has scrapped plans for a £50,000 TV ad revealing that cigarettes contain the radioactive poison polonium-210, the substance that killed Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, to spare his family's feelings.)

They said that other adverts in the 'Smoke is Poison' campaign, funded by the Department of Health and backed by Cancer Research UK (Britain's leading charity dedicated to cancer research), would air as planned.

'Unforeseen events'

In the campaign, award-winning Investigative Journalist Donal Macintyre interviews people who "may have been exposed to dangerous substances including formaldehyde and benzene" in a series of radio and television adverts.

In the ads, MacIntyre asks people in various professions what they are doing to protect themselves.

As the Docu-Journalist tells his interviewees that cigarettes contain the same chemicals their work involves them with, the camera records their quite genuine shock.

Russel Hopps, a Manchester undertaker who features in one of the TV advertisements, said: "I was really shocked when I heard that formaldehyde is in cigarettes. In our business we wear goggles, a mask, thick gloves and an apron to protect our health while we are embalming. Taking part in the filming made me wonder just what other nasty chemicals are in cigarette smoke. I've been thinking about trying to quit for ages but this has made me decide to give up for good."

Smoke from cigarettes contains some 4,000 chemicals, 69 of which are known to cause cancer. But three quarters of people Macintyre surveyed in the campaign were not able to name a single chemical, other than nicotine and tar, which are listed on cigarette packs.

Sara Hiom, deputy director of cancer information, said the decision to withhold the adverts focusing on polonium 210 was taken jointly with the Department of Health.

"In light of recent unforeseen events and in consultation with the Department of Health, we took the decision not to air the polonium adverts at this time."

Advertising campaigns take several months from brief to broadcast. Obviously, the campaign had been planned, researched, written, 'storyboarded' and shot long before Mr. Litvinenko was killed.

"Information about polonium in relation to the campaign does feature elsewhere, such as on the campaign website www.smokeispoison.com."

Go look. It does mention Polonium 210 - once in a list at the bottom of a long discussion on the poisons in tobacco smoke, but no other 'information' about the substance is on the site at all.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said, "When the Health Protection Agency confirmed that Mr. Litvinenko had died from Polonium 210 poisoning we began discussions about the content of the 'Smoke is Poison' campaign.

"Because two of the five ads contained references to Polonium in cigarettes we took the decision with Cancer Research to withdraw these ads from this campaign.

"The remaining ads have hard-hitting messages about the dangers of cigarette smoke and the poisonous substances it contains," added the spokeswoman.

Robert N. Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford University, who is also mentioned in the New York Times and the local Weekend Witness makes this statement: "We should also recall that people smoke a lot of cigarettes - about 5.7 trillion worldwide every year, enough to make a continuous chain from the earth to the sun and back, with enough left over for a few side-trips to Mars. If .04 picocuries of polonium are inhaled with every cigarette, about a quarter of a curie of one of the world's most radioactive poisons is inhaled along with the tar, nicotine and cyanide of all the world's cigarettes smoked each year. Pack-and-a-half smokers are dosed to the tune of about 300 chest X-rays."