Objectives: Formaldehyde is an IARC Group 1 carcinogen present in cigarette smoke. Concerns over its potential contribution to smoking related diseases have led to proposals for limits on the ratio of formaldehyde to nicotine yields in mainstream smoke as measured under Health Canada Intense (HCI) machine smoking conditions (Burns et al., 2008). However, there is surprisingly little published data on formaldehyde yields from contemporary cigarettes, of the thousands of cigarette brands on sale globally there are around 150 recent published ISO Formaldehyde smoke yield values (and fewer HCI smoke yields) covering relatively few countries. The current work was conducted to substantially enhance the size of the available yield database, and to provide greater clarity on the ranges of formaldehyde yields commonly obtained from contemporary cigarette products.

Method: Formaldehyde smoke yield data were assembled from published data (with control products and duplicate brands removed), and British American Tobacco (BAT) measured products. ISO yield data were analysed by quantile regression using the SAS statistical software.

Results: 700 ISO Formaldehyde yields have been assembled from the following sources: UK benchmark (25 brands), Health Canada 2004 survey (60), Health Australia (15), Counts et al. 2005 (48) and BAT measured brands (552 brands) covering 69 geographical areas. Quantile analysis of ISO data has provided median, quartile, and major percentile values for formaldehyde yields at ISO tar level from 1 to 15 mg. There was insufficient HCI formaldehyde yield data to conduct quantile analysis, however sufficient data is available to conduct an analysis of the ratio of HCI formaldehyde to nicotine yields. The limited HCI ratio dataset was found not to be normally distributed, therefore an empirical cumulative density analysis was conducted on the ratio values.

Conclusions: This work extends considerably the database of available formaldehyde smoke yield data. Statistical analysis approaches have provided numerical frameworks that allow for greater clarity on the range of formaldehyde yields commonly found with contemporary cigarette products.