Filter Ventilation and Design
SUBJECT: "Environmental Tobacco Smoke"
Abstract
Poses questions aimed at identifying the contribution of ETS to total indoor air pollution. Suggests that new data on matter need to be generated, rather than relying on existing data.
Fields
- Type
- Memorandum
- Company
- Lorillard
- Site
- G65
- Author
- Norman, V.
- Recipient
- Schultz, F.J.
Document Images
MEMORANDUM
TO: F. J. Schultz
FROM: V. Norman
SUBJECT: "Environmental Tobacco Smoke"
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Addressing the problem of how much does cigarette smoking contribute
to the Ambient Indoor Air Pollutant (AIAP) level, the following questions
are relevant:
How much sidestream (SS) does a cigarette produce?
2. How much does exhaled mainstream (MS) contribute? d'(61' ~r '~'v
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3. Given the mixture of SS and exhaled MS which is produced by th
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cigarette and gives rise to Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS), how 0
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fast do its individual components decay
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4. What is the chemical composition of AIAP in a smoking home and in a~
non-smoking home? ~ ~
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the decay rates of its-'
Given the ETS production of the cigarette
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components and the chemical composition of AIAP, how much of the v~Z~
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latter can be reasonably attributed to cigarettes? ,~;t e
6. Are the projections from 5. compatible with the findings from 4:.?
7. How ~oes one go about directly identifying what the contribution of
ETS s to AIAP?'
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What''data are currently available to answer the above questions and C
what work do we need to do?
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1. There are considerable literature data on the composition of SS. How- O
ever, the ranges of levels of individual compounds reported are very ~
wide, even for compounds that have ubiquitous precursors, i.e., in
cases where there should not be great differences between different
kinds of cigarettes. E.g., formaldehyde 7-5000 ug/cig, acetone
200-1250 ug/cig, acetic acid 627-29'16 ug/cig, etc. Thus one has two
choices -- either to make quality judgements as to how credible a
particular set of published data is or to produce one's own data. We
think that we need to produce our own data base with collection
methods in which we have faith, the quantitative characterization of
SS being a much trickier proposition than that of the MS.

.V
F'. J. Schultz
July 7, 1986
Page 2
2. There are very limited literature data on:the composition of exhaled
MS. Looking at the relative levels of the various compounds in MS'and
SS and considering that the inhaled MS undergoes a severe purification
process within~the smoker's respiratory passages, one would guess that
the contribution of exhaled MS to ETS is generally not very important.
One would also guess that there is a lot of difference from smoke com-
ponent to smoke component, i.e., readily adsorbable vapor phase compo-
nents, e.g., acetaldehyde, acrolein, etc. should be severely depleted
whereas a fair proportion of the particulate phase is exhaled albeit
in a scrubbed form. We need to either do some laboratory work in this
area or come up with some credible reasoning why we can afford to ig-
nore it.
3. We have some in house data and there are some literature reports on
the decay rates of a few cigarette smoke components (particulate mat-
ter, nicotine, formaldehyde). We would!like to see us develop a fin-
gerprint analysis of ETS decay encompassing a selection of vapor phase
components and semsvolatile types of materials.
4. Woul&it be feasible to solicit the help of some experimentally minded
Lorillard employees (smoking and non-smoking houses) to let us set up
some collection devices within the houses? Ideally, to reduce the
house-to-house variability, it would be best if the same house could
be put through smoking and non-smoking periods.
5., 6. Having,accomplished items 1-4, items 5. and 6. can be answered by
data:manipulation and analysis.
7. Given the different decay rates of the various components of ETS and
the fact that almost all of these compounds also arise from:other
sources to contribute to AIAP, it is clearly not feasible to estimate
the general contribution of ETS to AIAP on the basis of some individ-
ual compound analyses. The only compounds specific to tobacco are
tobacco alkaloids, nicotine in particular, and if one knows the decay
rate of nicotine and the decay rates of other species, some relative
estimates about other compounds couldlbe made. There also appears to
be a belief among some investigators that ETS has its own very charac-
teristic particle size distribution~which can be use&to estimate the
contribution of ETS to particulate AIAP. Among gas phase components
isoprene is probably produced in relatively larger quantities by burn-
ing tobacco than by other sources and could be of some use in estimat-
ing the ETS contribution.
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V. Norman
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