Nicotine

by Reina Ishikawa ​ NICOTINE IUPAC Name: 3-[(2S)-1-methylpyrrolidin-2-yl]pyridine Chemical Formula: C10H14N2 Molar mass: 162.26 g/mol Density: 1.01 g/cm³ Melt. Point: -79 °C (-110 °F) Boiling Point: 247 °C (477 °F)


 * How is it made? **

Nicotine is a substance found in small amounts in the leaves, roots, and seeds of the tobacco plant and lower quantities in other members of the Solanaceae (nightshade) family, which includes tomato, potato, eggplant, and green pepper. Nicotine alkaloids are also found in the leaves of the coca plant. It is a colorless and bitter-tasting liquid. Nicotine can also be made synthetically. It is a hydgroscopic, oily liquid that is capable to being mixed with water in its base form. As it has a nitrogenous base, nicotine forms salts with acids that are usually solid and water soluble. Synthetic nicotine is made with a combination of Niacin, Ethanol, Sulfuric Acid and a few other chemicals. Chemists classify nicotine as an alkaloid. Alkaloid is any of group of organic bases found in plants. Alkaloids contain carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen.

**How does it affect us?** Pure nicotine is extremely poisonous. It is used as a pesticide to kill insects on plants and internal parasites in animals. The only medicinal use of nicotine is to treat nicotine dependent people through gums, dermal patches, lozenges or nasal sprays.

One can get nicotine from smoking cigarettes or tobacco. The average cigarette contains 8 to 10 milligrams of nicotine, but much of this is lost in the process of burning. A smoker receives about 1 milligram of nicotine per cigarette. A pinch of chewing tobacco contains between 4.5 and 6.5 milligrams of nicotine. A small amount can cause rapid but weak pulse, vomiting, extreme weakness, or even collapse or death. Sixty milligrams of nicotine, about the amount a bottle cap would hold, can kill a human being. Nicotine may also block the release of the hormone insulin. Insulin tells cells to take up excess glucose from blood. This means that nicotine makes people somewhat having more sugar than usual in their blood. Nicotine increase basal metabolic rate slightly. This means that burn more calories than usually would. However, nicotine can increase the level of the cholesterol, LDL, which damages arteries. Therefore people may have more chance to have heart attack or a stroke. Recently, scientists have found out that nicotine’s metabolites, cotinine, may improve memory and protect brain cells from diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. In addition, nicotine can help improve some of the learning and memory problems associated with hypothyroidism. One day nicotine might use as the treatment of neurological disorders. However, moking cigarettes is still unhealthy for human body and it is highly addictive.

**Tobacco and Nicotine Addiction** Tobacco contains more than 4000 chemicals and 400 of these are poisonous such as nicotine, carbon monoxide, ammonia, and benzene. 43 of them cause cancer. Tobacco kills more people than alcohol (including drink and driving), cocaine, crack, heroin, car accidents, suicide, fires, and AIDS combined. Nicotine is a highly toxic and addictive substance. The effects on your body last between 40 minutes to a couple of hours. When a person smokes, nicotine diffuses through the skin, lungs and mucous membranes and from there it travels to blood vessels to be delivered to the rest of our body. It changes how your body and brain function by giving relaxed and invigorated feeling. As their nervous system adapt, smokers gradually increase the number of cigarettes, which increases the amount of nicotine in the blood. Eventually, a smoker reaches a target level and then smokes to maintain nicotine at this level. It is at this point that smokers become nicotine addiction. In addition, nicotine content in cigarettes has slowly increased over the years, and one study found out that there was an average increase between 1.6 % per year between the year of 1998 and 2005. This was found for all major marketcategories of cigarettes.

**History**

Nicotine is named after the tobacco plant Nicotiana Tabacum. This plant is named after Jean Nicot de Villemain, French ambassador in Portugal. He sent tobacco and seeds from Brazil to Paris in 1560 and promoted their medical use. Nicotine was first isolated from the tobacco plant in 1828 by German chemists Posselt and Reimann. They considered it as a poison. Its chemical formula was described by Melsens in 1843, and its structure was discovered by Garry Pinner in 1893, and it was first synthesized by A. Pictet and Crepieux in 1904.


 * Interesting Facts**

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 * Nicotine burns at a temperature below its boiling point.
 * it takes only 7 seconds for nicotine to hit the brain when inhaled.
 * Nicotine exposure could cause the netopathological changes experienced by infants dying from Sudden Death Infant Syndrome.
 * mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the expression of reality. smoke, due to the desire to self medicate, seeking the short term effects of nicotine

**Sources**

“How does the Nicotine Affect our Body?” Raul Cruz, Ezine Articles, 2010 <[]> “Nicotine- What Is It Made Of?” E-Notes, 2010 <[]> “Nicotine” Wikipedia, 30 May 2010 <[]> "15 nicotine facts everyone ought to know" May 31st, 2007 <[]>
 * __ Online __**

“The World Book Encyclopedia” Mary Alice Anderson, Lynn Fontana…etc, 2007 “Teen Smoking Lucent books” Elenor H. Ayer, c1999 “Helping a loved one live smoke-free: what works, what won’t, and why” Melin, Barbara White, c2002
 * __ Books __**