Direct imaging evidences of metal inorganic contaminants traced into cigarettes

Abstract

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.

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