This Philip Morris Europe (PME) interim scientific report shows that PME performed detailed testing to find out the quantities of dangerous and irritating chemicals that smoking of cigarettes puts into ambient air. A special airtight room was created just for the experiments:
"Airtightness
It is extremely important that the experimental room be airtight to prevent smoke escaping or air entering during the experiments. Every possible precaution was taken to effectively seal the experimental room. All joints were sealed with silicone glue, the rivet holes were plugged with epoxide glue and a good seal was made at the door."
PME used a smoking machine to smoke beween 5 and 60 cigarettes in the room and then tested the air of the room for carbon monoxide, nicotine, hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, aldehydes, and other dangerous or irritating chemicals. Some of the testing was done using two different methods to verify accuracy, and some tests were done twice.
Charts in the appendix of the document indicate that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air of the experimental room increased almost linearly with the number of cigarettes smoked. The ammonia concentration also increased in almost perfect linear fashion proportional to the number of cigarettes smoked. The same was true with hydrogen cyanide. The report states that the concentration of hydrogen cyanide in the room failed to decrease for over an hour after smoking ceased:
"Five, 15, 30 and 60 cigarettes...were smoked in the experimental room under standard smoking conditions...Measured HCN concentrations were found to be proportional to the number of cigarettes smoked over the investigated range....It was found that HCN concentrations in the room did not decay over a period of one hour."
The report also states,
"In all cases investigated concentrations [of the investigated chemicals] were proportional to the number of cigarettes smoked, all deviations being with the range of experimental errors."
So the more cigarettes that were smoked in an enclosed space, the higher the concentrations of chemicals were put into the air.
All testing was done in overseas labs in Europe.