Dirty cigarettes. (Letters from our readers).

Three articles in the September/October issue of E relate to tobacco issues. "Battling Blood Sugar" (Your Health) informs us, "Dioxin exposure may be the most significant environmental risk factor for adult onset ... diabetes." The article cites only air, water and food as sources of contamination by this deadly byproduct of manmade chlorine.

It is peculiar that the most hated and notorious source of direct dioxin poisoning, the typical cigarette, remains invisible to those with concerns about diabetes and a host of other diseases that are linked to dioxin exposures. According to one study, these exposures present high levels of dioxin to a smoker, equivalent, they noted, to "emissions from an industrial flue." But it's not from tobacco, but from hosts of chlorinated pesticide residues, bleached paper, any number of untested additives and industrial waste cellulose in cigarettes.

Your article "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" (House and Home) reveals that, according to the EPA, the cancer risk from wood smoke is "... 12 times greater than an equal amount of tobacco smoke." Are you talking about plain tobacco smoke, or about a typical dioxin-delivering cigarette, with its host of carcinogenic adulterants?

In your Ask E column, you ask, "Do newspapers contain dioxin?" The surprising answer is that dioxin generation by the paper industry has been virtually eliminated in the U.S. Good news indeed. However, the newspapers haven't done much, if anything, to report this. Why not? To do so would be to admit that the chlorine/dioxin processes were harmful, thus presenting a liability problem regarding 60 years or more of widespread public and environmental damage, endangerment, disease and death.

John Jonik, Philadelphia, PA