Demonstrating the consistency of nicotine delivery from an e-cigarette is a requirement per EU Tobacco Product Directive (TPD) 2, Article 20, 3(f) (The European Council and the Council of the European Union, 2014). The Directive states that e-cigarettes placed on the European Union (EU) market should “…deliver the nicotine doses at consistent levels under normal conditions of use.” This means that the dose of nicotine should be within a specified acceptable range around a predefined target value (this can be either the mean average of the nicotine levels or the labelled claim for nicotine delivery per puff). However, the EU TPD2 does not provide definitions of a “consistent level”, “dose” or “normal conditions of use.” Therefore different interpretation can be made to define nicotine consistency.

In 2016 the French National Organization for Standardization (AFNOR) published the standard “Electronic cigarettes and e-liquids - Part 3”, which will form the basis of European standards projects. This standard requires the nicotine concentration for the first, third and fifth series of 20 puffs to be within ±25 % of the mean value. The objective of this study was to assess whether the acceptance criteria was achievable using blu™ e-cigarettes marketed in the EU. Our study investigated nicotine delivery from several e-cigarette types according to AFNOR standard.

The results of our study show that the ±25 % as proposed by AFNOR is achievable with the products tested.