Modified cigarette filters: selective reduction of PAH.

摘要

We would like to reply to the letter of Chuan Liu (British American Tobacco) referring to our article, Lodovici et al., published in Food and Chemical Toxicology (2007).As stated in our article, prior to smoking, the cigarette filters were lightly smoothed between the thumb and forefinger to ease the drawing of the smoking machine, that procedure was followed both with normal and modified filters. According to Liu, reports of this procedure and the injection of a DNA solution into commercial cigarette filters might change the drop of filter pressure and thus the removal efficiency of "tar" (nicotine free, dry particulate matter). However, as shown in Table 1 of our paper tar levels measured in mainstream smoke of brands with normal and modified filters are similar to values declared by the commercial manufacturers. Therefore, it is not true that the procedure employed changes tar retention by the filters.