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CORESTA Congress, Online, 2022, Smoke Science/Product Technology Groups, ST 01

The importance of assessing puffing topography to Inform e-cigarette emissions testing

WADKIN R.(1); ALLEN C.(1); FEARON I.M.(2)
(1) Broughton Life Sciences, Earby, Lancashire, U.K.; (2) whatIF? Consulting Ltd, Harwell, U.K.

Analysis of the chemical composition of e-cigarette emissions is an important step in determining whether e-cigarettes support both individual and population-level harm reduction. Commonly, e-cigarette emissions for chemical analyses are collected by using e-cigarettes according to puffing regimens stipulated by standards bodies such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) or the Cooperation Centre for Scientific Research Relative to Tobacco (CORESTA). Standardised puffing regimens are often recommended by regulatory authorities who require the submission of e-cigarette emissions data to make a decision regarding allowing a product to be commercially marketed, in part because their use ensures uniformity between studies. However, standardised regimens do not necessarily reflect the puffing behaviour of users of a given e-cigarette and this can lead to under- or over-estimating real-world emissions from e-cigarettes. In this presentation, we describe how human puffing behaviour (topography) information can be collected both in the clinical laboratory and in the real world using a variety of different methodologies. By presenting data collected in human studies we will further discuss how topography information can be used to dictate e-cigarette puffing regimens for collecting emissions for chemical analyses and how this may lead both to better predictions of human exposure to e-cigarette aerosol constituents and to more informed risk assessments that better predict e-cigarette tobacco harm reduction potential.