The Health Sciences Authority’s recent decision to stop the sale and supply of eight heartburn medicines because they contain cancer-causing impurities would worry many people, since these are widely used medicines for a common condition. 

Nitrosamines are the cancer-causing agent in this case.

Those concerned about the announcement and nitrosamines may wish to know that cigarette smoke also contains high levels of cancer-causing nitrosamines. 

These carcinogens are known as “tobacco-specific nitrosamines”.

If people are worried about cancer-causing impurities in tightly regulated medicines, they should all the more be alarmed by the fact that we are regularly assaulted by secondhand smoke involuntarily.  Carcinogens in the form of tobacco-specific nitrosamines are hiding in plain sight and we inhale them.

Smokers can afford to care less about nitrosamines in these affected medicines, since they are already inhaling copious amounts of them while puffing away.

Historical baggage has led to the double standard of banning nitrosamines in medicines, but not in cigarettes.

Those of us who want nothing to do with tobacco-specific nitrosamines can only appeal to smokers to exercise more self-restraint, and the authorities to carry out better enforcement of smoking-prohibition laws and to offer the public greater protection against these carcinogens. 

There is much to be done for the latter.

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