The analysis of mainstream smoke emissions of Canadian 'super slim' cigarettes

Smokers' support for the ban on sale of slim cigarettes in six European countries: findings from the EUREST-PLUS ITC Europe Surveys

Background: Efforts to regulate tobacco products and reduce consumption in the European Union (EU) include the European Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), which went into force in May 2016. Despite the initial discussion to include a ban on sale of slim cigarettes, it was excluded in the final TPD. The main goal of this study was to examine support for a ban on slim cigarettes among smokers in six European Countries. Methods: Data from the 2018 (Wave 2) International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project 6 European Country (ITC 6E) EUREST-PLUS project survey, a cross sectional study of adult smokers (n=5592) from Germany, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Spain, was analysed. Descriptive statistics were used to estimate support for a ban on slim cigarettes by sociodemographic characteristics and smoking behaviors. Logistic regression analysis was used to examine factors associated with support for a ban on slim cigarettes and perceptions of harm. Results: Support for a ban on slims varied across countries, with highest support in Romania (33.8%), and lowest in Greece (18.0%). Female smokers (OR=0.78; 95%CI=0.67-0.91, daily smokers (OR=0.68; 95%CI=0.47-0.97), menthol smokers (OR=0.55; 95%CI=0.36-0.86), and smokers who did not have plans to quit within next six months (OR=0.45; 95%CI=0.36-0.56) had significantly lower odds of supporting a ban on slim cigarettes. Overall, 21% of smokers perceived slim cigarettes as less harmful than regular cigarettes. Conclusions: Support for a ban of slim cigarettes was relatively low among smokers, while misperceptions that slim cigarettes are less harmful is high, particularly among countries where slim cigarette use is more prevalent. Findings support a ban on slim cigarettes to reduce misperceptions around slim cigarettes being less harmful.

Quantification of nitromethane in mainstream smoke using gas chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry

Nitromethane is a volatile organic compound categorized as a Group 2B carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. It has been detected in mainstream cigarette smoke, but few reliable methods have been reported for accurate quantification. We developed, a sensitive, selective, fully validated method for the targeted determination of nitromethane in mainstream tobacco smoke in ten U.S. domestic brands and two quality control materials (3R4F and CM6). The vapor phase portion of machine-generated cigarette mainstream smoke, under modified ISO 3308:2000 regime (ISO) and modified intense regime (HCI), from single cigarettes was collected using airtight polyvinylfluoride sampling bags. The bags' contents were extracted using methanol containing an isotopically labeled internal standard followed by gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. This approach is sufficiently sensitive to measure nitromethane levels in the nanogram range, with a method limit of detection of 72.3 ng/cig. Within-product variability estimated from the replicate analysis of 10 products ranged from 4.6%-16.3% (n = 6) over the two different smoking regimes, and method reproducibility estimated from two products used as quality control materials (3R4F and CM6) yielded intermediate precision values ranging from 16.6 to 20.8% (n = 20). Under HCI, nitromethane yields in machine-generated cigarette smoke from ten different domestic cigarette products ranged from 3.2 to 12 μg/cig; under ISO yields ranged from 1.6 to 4.9 μg/cig under standardized smoking machine conditions. Nitromethane yields are related to both the smoke regime (blocking of vent holes, puff duration and puff volume) and the heterogeneity of tobacco mixtures. This method provides a selective and fully validated technique to accurately quantify nitromethane in mainstream cigarette smoke, with minimal waste generation. It is an improvement over previous methods with regards to specificity, throughput, and simplicity of the sample collection process.

Smoking regular and low-nicotine cigarettes results in comparable levels of volatile organic compounds in blood and exhaled breath

Smokers are exposed to more than 6000 (toxic) smoke components including volatile organic compounds (VOCs). In this study VOCs levels in headspace of blood and exhaled breath, in the mainstream smoke of three types of cigarettes of one brand varying in declared tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide (TNCO) yields are investigated. The objective was to identify whether VOC levels correlate with TNCO yields of cigarettes smoked according to ISO 3308. Our data show that smoking regular and low-TNCO cigarettes result in comparable levels of VOCs in blood and exhaled breath. Hence, declared TNCO-yields as determined with the ISO 3308 machine smoking protocol are irrelevant for predicting VOC exposure upon human smoking. Venous blood and exhaled breath were sampled from 12 male volunteers directly before and 10 min after smoking cigarettes on 3 d (day 1 Marlboro Red (regular), day 2 Marlboro Prime (highly ventilated, low-TNCO), day 3 Marlboro Prime with blocked filter ventilation (taped)). Upon smoking, the levels of toluene, ethylbenzene, m/p-xylene, o-xylene, and 2,5-dimethylfuran in both headspace of venous blood and exhaled breath increase within the same range for all three cigarette types smoked. However, no strong correlation was found between VOC levels in exhaled breath and VOC levels in headspace of blood because of variations between the individual smoking volunteers. More research is required in order to use exhaled breath sampling as a non-invasive quantitative marker for volatile toxicants from cigarette smoke exposure of different brands.

Slim cigarette smoking prevalence among Canadian youth smokers: Implications for federal standardized packaging legislation

OBJECTIVES

Tobacco companies market to females and young people through slim cigarette design features and packaging. This study assessed the prevalence and perceptions of slim cigarette smoking in grades 9-12 student smokers across Canada using multiple data sources.

METHODS

Data from three cycles of the Youth Smoking Survey (2008/2009 to 2012/2013) and one cycle of the Cancer Risk Assessment in Youth Survey (2015) were used. The prevalence and perceptions of slim cigarette smoking among current smokers were compared by sex and grade.

RESULTS

In all surveys, the rate of slim cigarette use was higher among females than males; however, this difference was not statistically significant. In the two most recent surveys, grades 9-10 students had a significantly higher prevalence of use compared with grades 11-12 students. The majority of students (59.8% of females and 53.3% of males) responded, "I don't know" to the survey item seeking to determine perceptions of harm of slim cigarettes compared with regular cigarettes.

CONCLUSION

Slim cigarette use among Canadian grades 9-12 students represents a small but growing problem. Youths' uncertainty around the harms associated with slim cigarette use and the effect of slim cigarette packaging and design on harm perceptions indicate the need for product design regulations and further education in Canada.

Cigarette Design Features: Effects on Emission Levels, User Perception, and Behavior

Objectives

This paper describes the effects of non-tobacco, physical cigarette design features on smoke emissions, product appeal, and smoking behaviors - 3 factors that determine smoker's exposure and related health risks.

Methods

We reviewed available evidence for the impact of filter ventilation, new filter types, and cigarettes dimensions on toxic emissions, smoker's perceptions, and behavior. For evidence sources we used scientific literature and websites providing product characteristics and marketing information.

Results

Whereas filter ventilation results in lower machine-generated emissions, it also leads to perceptions of lighter taste and relative safety in smokers who can unwittingly employ more intense smoking behavior to obtain the desired amount of nicotine and sensory appeal. Filter additives that modify smoke emissions can also modify sensory cues, resulting in changes in smoking behavior. Flavor capsules increase the cigarette's appeal and novelty, and lead to misperceptions of reduced harm. Slim cigarettes have lower yields of some smoke emissions, but smoking behavior can be more intense than with standard cigarettes.

Conclusions

Physical design features significantly impact machine-measured emission yields in cigarette smoke, product appeal, smoking behaviors, and exposures in smokers. The influence of current and emerging design features is important in understanding the effectiveness of regulatory actions to reduce smoking-related harm.

Influence of cigarette circumference on smoke chemistry, biological activity, and smoking behaviour

Cigarettes with reduced circumference are increasingly popular in some countries, hence it is important to understand the effects of circumference reduction on their burning behaviour, smoke chemistry and bioactivity. Reducing circumference reduces tobacco mass burn rate, puff count and static burn time, and increases draw resistance and rod length burned during puff and smoulder periods. Smoulder temperature increases with decreasing circumference, but with no discernible effect on cigarette ignition propensity during a standard test. At constant packing density, mainstream (MS) and sidestream (SS) tar and nicotine yields decrease approximately linearly with decreasing circumference, as do the majority of smoke toxicants. However, volatile aldehydes, particularly formaldehyde, show a distinctly non-linear relationship with circumference and increases in the ratios of aldehydes to tar and nicotine have been observed as the circumference decreases. Mutagenic, cytotoxic and tumorigenic specific activities of smoke condensates (i.e. per unit weight of condensate) decrease as circumference decreases. Recent studies suggest that there is no statistical difference in mouth-level exposure to tar and nicotine among smokers of cigarettes with different circumferences. Commercially available slim cigarettes usually have changes in other cigarette design features compared with cigarettes with standard circumference, so it is difficult to isolate the effect of circumference on the properties of commercial products. However, available data shows that changes in cigarette circumference offer no discernible change to the harm associated with smoking.

Are Filter-Tipped Cigarettes Still Less Harmful than Non-Filter Cigarettes?--A Laser Spectrometric Particulate Matter Analysis from the Non-Smokers Point of View

BACKGROUND

Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is associated with human morbidity and mortality, particularly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD and lung cancer. Although direct DNA-damage is a leading pathomechanism in active smokers, passive smoking is enough to induce bronchial asthma, especially in children. Particulate matter (PM) demonstrably plays an important role in this ETS-associated human morbidity, constituting a surrogate parameter for ETS exposure.

METHODS

Using an Automatic Environmental Tobacco Smoke Emitter (AETSE) and an in-house developed, non-standard smoking regime, we tried to imitate the smoking process of human smokers to demonstrate the significance of passive smoking. Mean concentration (C(mean)) and area under the curve (AUC) of particulate matter (PM2.5) emitted by 3R4F reference cigarettes and the popular filter-tipped and non-filter brand cigarettes "Roth-Händle" were measured and compared. The cigarettes were not conditioned prior to smoking. The measurements were tested for Gaussian distribution and significant differences.

RESULTS

C(mean) PM2.5 of the 3R4F reference cigarette: 3911 µg/m³; of the filter-tipped Roth-Händle: 3831 µg/m³; and of the non-filter Roth-Händle: 2053 µg/m³. AUC PM2.5 of the 3R4F reference cigarette: 1,647,006 µg/m³·s; of the filter-tipped Roth-Händle: 1,608,000 µg/m³·s; and of the non-filter Roth-Händle: 858,891 µg/m³·s.

CONCLUSION

The filter-tipped cigarettes (the 3R4F reference cigarette and filter-tipped Roth-Händle) emitted significantly more PM2.5 than the non-filter Roth-Händle. Considering the harmful potential of PM, our findings note that the filter-tipped cigarettes are not a less harmful alternative for passive smokers. Tobacco taxation should be reconsidered and non-smoking legislation enforced.

Are all cigarettes just the same? Female's perceptions of slim, coloured, aromatized and capsule cigarettes

Twelve focus groups in Glasgow (Scotland) were conducted with female non-smokers and occasional smokers aged 12-24 years (N = 75), with each group shown 11 cigarettes: two (standard) cigarettes with cork filters; two coloured cigarettes (pink or brown); four slim cigarettes; an aromatized black cigarette; a menthol cigarette and a cigarette with a flavour-changing rupturable capsule in the filter. Participants were asked to rank the cigarettes by appeal, taste and harm. The capsule cigarette was then discussed in depth. The pink coloured cigarette and slim cigarettes created significant interest and were generally perceived as most appealing and pleasant tasting, and least harmful. The black aromatized cigarette received a mixed response, with some disliking the dark colour and associating it with low appeal, strong taste and increased harm, whereas for others the smell helped to enhance appeal and taste perceptions and lower perceptions of harm. The novel capsule cigarette, when discussed in-depth, was viewed very positively. Just as research shows that cigarette packs can influence perceptions of appeal, harm and taste, this study suggests that the actual cigarettes can do likewise. The findings have implications for tobacco education and policy.

Use of the zebrafish larvae as a model to study cigarette smoke condensate toxicity

The smoking of tobacco continues to be the leading cause of premature death worldwide and is linked to the development of a number of serious illnesses including heart disease, respiratory diseases, stroke and cancer. Currently, cell line based toxicity assays are typically used to gain information on the general toxicity of cigarettes and other tobacco products. However, they provide little information regarding the complex disease-related changes that have been linked to smoking. The ethical concerns and high cost associated with mammalian studies have limited their widespread use for in vivo toxicological studies of tobacco. The zebrafish has emerged as a low-cost, high-throughput, in vivo model in the study of toxicology. In this study, smoke condensates from 2 reference cigarettes and 6 Canadian brands of cigarettes with different design features were assessed for acute, developmental, cardiac, and behavioural toxicity (neurotoxicity) in zebrafish larvae. By making use of this multifaceted approach we have developed an in vivo model with which to compare the toxicity profiles of smoke condensates from cigarettes with different design features. This model system may provide insights into the development of smoking related disease and could provide a cost-effective, high-throughput platform for the future evaluation of tobacco products.

The association between cigarette rod length, slim design, and blood cadmium levels among U.S. smokers: NHANES 1999-2010

BACKGROUND

Previous research has shown that long or slim cigarette design can mitigate perception of harmfulness. Cadmium (Cd) is a toxicant in cigarettes and is associated with adverse outcomes. We assessed the relationship between cigarette rod length/circumference and blood Cd levels among U.S. smokers using data from the 1999-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

METHODS

The analyses were performed on 4486 current cigarette smokers aged ≥20years old. Cigarette rod length included regular (68-72mm), king (79-88mm), long (94-101mm), and ultra-long (110-121mm) cigarettes currently smoked. Overall and gender stratified multivariate linear regression analyses were performed, adjusting for other influential covariates.

RESULTS

Gender stratified analysis indicated that female smokers of long and ultra-long cigarette had 20% and 27% higher mean Cd levels compared to smokers of regular sized cigarettes respectively, despite the fact that all the ultra-long cigarettes were slim cigarettes. Furthermore, among females, slim cigarette users did not reduce blood cadmium levels compared to non-slim users.

CONCLUSIONS

Female smokers of long or ultra-long cigarettes had higher mean blood Cd levels compared to smokers of regular cigarettes independent of slim design. Further research into this association is warranted.

Approaches for the design of reduced toxicant emission cigarettes

Cigarette smoking causes serious diseases through frequent and prolonged exposure to toxicants. Technologies are being developed to reduce smokers’ toxicant exposure, including filter adsorbents, tobacco treatments and substitutes. This study examined the effect of modifications to filter ventilation, variations in cigarette circumference and active charcoal filter length and loading, as well as combinations of these features in a reduced-toxicant prototype (RTP) cigarette, on the yields of toxicants in cigarette smoke. An air-dilution mechanism, called split-tipping, was developed in which a band of porous paper in the centre of the filter tipping functions to minimise the loss of effective filter ventilation that occurs at the high flow rates encountered during human-smoking, and to facilitate the diffusional loss of volatile toxicants. As compared with conventional filter ventilation cigarettes, split-tipping reduced tar and volatile smoke constituent emissions under high flow rate machine-smoking conditions, most notably for products with a 1-mg ISO tar yield. Furthermore, mouth level exposure (MLE) to tar and nicotine was reduced among smokers of 1-mg ISO tar cigarettes in comparison to smokers of cigarettes with traditional filter ventilation. For higher ISO tar level cigarettes, however, there were no significant reductions in MLE. Smaller cigarette circumferences reduced sidestream toxicant yields and modified the balance of mainstream smoke chemistry with reduced levels of aromatic amines and benzo[a]pyrene but increased yields of formaldehyde. Smaller circumference cigarettes also had lower mainstream yields of volatile toxicants. Longer cigarette filters containing increased levels of high-activity carbon (HAC) showed reduced machine-smoking yields of volatile toxicants: with up to 97% removal for some volatile toxicants at higher HAC loadings. Split-tipping was combined with optimal filter length and cigarette circumference in an RTP cigarette that gave significantly lower mainstream (up to ~90%) and sidestream (predominately 20%–60%) smoke yields of numerous toxicants as compared with a commercial comparator cigarette under machine-smoking conditions. Significantly lower mainstream and sidestream smoke toxicant yields were observed for an RTP cigarette comprising several toxicant reducing technologies; these observations warrant further evaluation in clinical studies where real-world relevance can be tested using biomarkers of exposure and physiological effect.

Comparison between the mainstream smoke of eleven RYO tobacco brands and the reference tobacco 3R4F

In this study 11 commercial roll-your-own (RYO) tobacco brands sold in Spain and the reference tobacco 3R4F have been smoked and several components of the mainstream tobacco smoke have been analyzed. Cigarettes were prepared using commercial tubes, and were smoked under smoking conditions based on the ISO 3308. The gaseous and condensed fractions of the smoke from RYO brands and 3R4F have been analyzed and compared. RYO tobaccos, as opposed to 3R4F, present lower amounts of condensed products in the traps than in the filters. In general, RYO tobaccos also provide lower yields of most of the compounds detected in the gas fraction. The yield of CO is between 15.4 and 20.4 mg/cigarette. In most of the cases studied, RYO tobaccos deliver higher amounts of nicotine than the 3R4F tobacco. On average, the yield of the different chemical families of compounds appearing in the particulate matter retained in the cigarette filters tends to be around three times higher than those obtained from 3R4F, whereas similar values have been obtained in the particulate matter retained in the traps located after the filters. It can be concluded that RYO tobaccos are not less hazardous than the reference tobacco, which may be contrary to popular belief.