Brand Cigarillos: Low Price but High Particulate Matter Levels-Is Their Favorable Taxation in the European Union Justified?

backgroundSecond hand smoke (ETS)-associated particulate matter (PM) contributes considerably to indoor air contamination and constitutes a health risk for passive smokers. Easy to measure, PM is a useful parameter to estimate the dosage of ETS that passive smokers are exposed to. Apart from its suitability as a surrogate parameter for ETS-exposure, PM itself affects human morbidity and mortality in a dose-dependent manner. We think that ETS-associated PM should be considered an independent hazard factor, separately from the many other known harmful compounds of ETS. We believe that brand-specific and tobacco-product-specific differences in the release of PM matter and that these differences are of public interest.

methodsTo generate ETS of cigarettes and cigarillos as standardized and reproducible as possible, an automatic second hand smoke emitter (AETSE) was developed and placed in a glass chamber. L&M cigarettes ("without additives", "red label", "blue label"), L&M filtered cigarillos ("red") and 3R4F standard research cigarettes (as reference) were smoked automatically according to a self-developed, standardized protocol until the tobacco product was smoked down to 8 mm distance from the tipping paper of the filter.

resultsMean concentration (Cmean) and area under the curve (AUC) in a plot of PM2.5 against time were measured, and compared. CmeanPM2.5 were found to be 518 μg/m(3) for 3R4F cigarettes, 576 μg/m(3) for L&M "without additives" ("red"), 448 μg/m(3) for L&M "blue label", 547 μg/m(3) for L&M "red label", and 755 μg/m(3) for L&M filtered cigarillos ("red"). AUCPM2.5-values were 208,214 μg/m(3)·s for 3R4F reference cigarettes, 204,629 μg/m(3)·s for L&M "without additives" ("red"), 152,718 μg/m(3)·s for L&M "blue label", 238,098 μg/m(3)·s for L&M "red label" and 796,909 μg/m(3)·s for L&M filtered cigarillos ("red").

conclusionConsidering the large and significant differences in particulate matter emissions between cigarettes and cigarillos, we think that a favorable taxation of cigarillos is not justifiable.