Today, environmental health research of adverse hybrid materials diffused by cigarette represents a new challenge for identifying new health risks directly related to the specific micro-sized materials in terms of their morpho-chemical features. Distinctive assumptions about the origin, the evolution? growth, and the functionalization of toxic elusive particles have been proposed by scientific research to attend the relevant toxicological aspects of observable behaviors. Therefore, direct morpho-chemical observations of the toxic hybrid particles are the most important factor for showing their adverse effects. Here, we report how metal inorganic particles, identified in three micrometric regions of the cigarette, evolve in their chemical size distributions into a self-assembled agglomerates ranging from ultrafine powder to large micrometric complex before and after smoking. Detailed morpho-chemical investigation on these metal inorganic materials interacting with cigarette components, quantified in situ through electron microscopy techniques, has been performed for one traditional and two heat-not-burn cigarettes of three different brands. The experimental informations gathered allowed us to figure out the evolution of the particles from the early stage (before smoking) to the final (after smoking) assembled in hazardous large agglomerates chemically manipulated and delivered by particles heat carrier, the smoke. In particular, our work shows the dual role of the adverse smoke, generated by burning and heating processes, capable of growing multi-elemental macro-aggregates and of transporting the toxic pollutants, thereby the diffusing of contaminants in the natural environmental is independent from the safety engineered features adopted by tobacco company. The reported results represent a valuable background toward the full comprehension of evolution of the toxic materials into cigarettes responsible of altering and destroying the already contaminated nature, especially for human health.

is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that encompasses all aspects of tobacco use, prevention and cessation that can promote a tobacco free society. The aim of the journal is to foster, promote and disseminate research involving tobacco use, prevention, policy implementation at a regional, national or international level, disease development-progression related to tobacco use, tobacco use impact from the cellular to the international level and finally the treatment of tobacco attributable disease through smoking cessation.

Background Recent events highlight how emerging and re-emerging pathogens are actually becoming global challenges for public health. In December 2019, a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has emerged. This has suddenly turned out into a global health concern which has led to a very high number of papers published in the scientific literature. Aim of this research is to focus on the bibliometric aspects in order to give researchers a glimpse on what is published in the first 30-days of a global epidemic outbreak. Methods We searched MEDLINE (PubMed) electronic database in order to find all relevant studies in the first 30-days from the first publication (which appeared on Pubmed at 14/01/2020), meaning the period 15/01/2020-13/02/2020. We used the following search string: coronavirus* OR Pneumonia of Unknown Etiology OR Covid-19 OR nCoV. We placed a language restriction for English, but no publication status or study design limit was put in place for our search. Results From the initial 462 identified articles, 234 articles were found as pertinent and read in extenso in order to classify them. The vast majority of papers come from China, UK and USA. 66.2% of the papers were Editorials, comments, letters or other kind of mainly reported data. 10.7% of papers were secondary literature papers (mainly narrative reviews). The remaining 23.1% were original primary studies. Only 17.5% of the sources used data which were directly collected on the field. Conclusions Almost all of data came from China. Even if some preferential channels were guaranteed for publishing those results in the most important journals, it appears that the vast majority of publication in scientific literature in the first 30-days of an epidemic outbreak is based more on reported data and comments, and only a small fraction of the papers have primary data collected in the field. Nevertheless the whole international literature depends on that type of data sources in the early days of the epidemic. Key messages This is the first bibliometric research in Pubmed Database on the first 30 days of publications regarding the novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak of 2019. The vast majority of publication in the first 30-days of an epidemic outbreak are reported data or comments, and only a small fraction of the papers has directly collected data.