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Health authorities have recently tagged the watercress plant as an improbably defense against carcinogen in the smoking population. 

Nitrosamine ketone which is activated nicotine along with benzene and acrolein is understood to have been reduced due to daily supplements of the watercress extract in the study from the University of Pittsburgh. The extract of the plant with botanical name Nasturtium officinale and is a native of both Asia and Europe taken four times a day will trim down the activation of key carcinogen found in cigarette smoking which will include purifying other detrimental ingredients that comes in smoking. The study however is not a cure-all for a person to stop with the addiction but could provide as a vital positive feature in the fight against carcinogen and cancer as cited by UPI Health News. 

The study employed a registry of 82 test subjects who were cigarette smokers in a casual clinical trial led by Dr. Jian-Min Yuan, the associate director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Control and Population Science.

The test subjects' one or the other was given 10 milligrams of the watercress plant integrated into one milliliter of olive oil which was given four times on a daily basis for a week or they were administered with a placebo.

The set of test subjects were then subjected to a 7-day detoxification phase where their body was not subjected to the plant or the placebo. There was then a changeover between the group taking the watercress plant extract and the group taking the placebo. Throughout the said experiment all test subjects continued their smoking habits.

7.7 percent of the nicotine-derived nitrosamine ketone was diminished in the smokers who took the watercress plant extract. The plant also managed to purify benzene by 24.6 per cent and acrolein by 15.1 per cent, all in just a week of experimentation. 

"Cigarette smokers are at far greater risk than the general public for developing lung cancer, and helping smokers quit should be our top cancer prevention priority in these people," Yuan was quoted in Science Daily.