Comparison of emissions across tobacco products: A slippery slope in tobacco control.

In this narrative review, we highlight the challenges of comparing emissions from different tobacco products under controlled laboratory settings (using smoking/vaping machines). We focus on tobacco products that generate inhalable smoke or aerosol, such as cigarettes, cigars, hookah, electronic cigarettes, and heated tobacco products. We discuss challenges associated with sample generation including variability of smoking/vaping machines, lack of standardized adaptors that connect smoking/vaping machines to different tobacco products, puffing protocols that are not representative of actual use, and sample generation session length (minutes or number of puffs) that depends on product characteristics. We also discuss the challenges of physically characterizing and trapping emissions from products with different aerosol characteristics. Challenges to analytical method development are also covered, highlighting matrix effects, order of magnitude differences in analyte levels, and the necessity of tailored quality control/quality assurance measures. The review highlights two approaches in selecting emissions to monitor across products, one focusing on toxicants that were detected and quantified with optimized methods for combustible cigarettes, and the other looking for product-specific toxicants using non-targeted analysis. The challenges of data reporting and statistical analysis that allow meaningful comparison across products are also discussed. We end the review by highlighting that even if the technical challenges are overcome, emission comparison may obscure the absolute exposure from novel products if we only focus on relative exposure compared to combustible products.

Informations de copyright

© 2024 El-Hellani A. et al.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

The authors have each completed and submitted an ICMJE form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest. The authors declare that they have no competing interests, financial or otherwise, related to the current work. A. El-Hellani, A. Adeniji, H.C. Erythropel, I. Rahman, I. Stepanov, R.M. Strongin, T.L. Wagener, and M.C. Brinkman report that since the initial planning of the work they have received support from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (U54DA046060-01). A. El-Hellani, A. Adeniji, T.L. Wagener and M.C. Brinkman also report that since the initial planning of the work they have received support from the National Cancer Institute (U54CA287392). H.C. Erythropel reports that since the initial planning of the work he has received support from the National Institute of Drug Abuse & FDA CTP (U54DA036151), I. Rahman has received support from the National Cancer Institute (U54CA228110), I. Stepanov has received support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (U01DA045523), and R.M. Strongin has received support from the National Institute of Health (R01ES025257). A. El-Hellani reports that in the past 36 months he has received payments from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (R01DA052565), I. Stepanov has received payments from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA048899), National Cancer Institute (P01CA269048 and P01CA217806), and T.L. Wagener and M.C. Brinkman have received payments from the National Cancer Institute (R01CA255563 and R01CA276696), and from FDA Center for Tobacco Products (UC2FD007229).