Face Mask as a Versatile Sampling Device for the Assessment of Personal Exposure to 54 Toxic Compounds in Environmental Tobacco Smoke

Abstract

Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), which contains hundreds of toxic compounds, significantly increases the risk of developing many human diseases, including lung cancer. The most common method of assessing personal exposure to ETS-borne toxicants is by sampling sidestream smoke generated by a smoking machine through a sorbent tube or filter, followed by solvent extraction and instrumental analysis. However, the ETS sampled may not truly represent the ETS in the ambient environment, due to complicating factors from the smoke released by the burning end of the cigarette and from the absorption of the chemicals in the respiratory tract of the smoker. In this study, we developed and validated an alternative air sampling method involving breathing through a face mask to simultaneously determine personal exposure to 54 ETS-borne compounds, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, aromatic amines, alkaloids, and phenolic compounds in real smoking scenarios. The newly developed method was used to evaluate the risk associated with exposure to ETS released from conventional cigarettes (CCs) and that from novel tobacco products such as e-cigarettes (ECs) and heated tobacco products (HTPs), with the observation of cancer risk associated with exposure to ETS released from CCs significantly higher than that from ECs and HTPs. It is anticipated that this method offers a convenient and sensitive way to collect samples for assessing the health impacts of ETS exposure.

The Product Science of Electrically Heated Tobacco Products: An Updated Narrative Review of the Scientific Literature

“…A single study was identified that attempted to quantify the cancer risk associated with bystander exposure to emissions from HTPs and compare this to the cancer risk associated with ETS exposure [ 189 ]. The described methodology used polyurethane foam facemasks worn by non-smoking volunteers present in the vicinity of smokers to collect emissions released by their smoking activity.…”

Secondhand Nicotine Absorption From E-Cigarette Vapor vs Tobacco Smoke in Children

“…Therefore, children’s exposure to nicotine from secondhand vapor is likely to be substantially lower than that from secondhand smoke, and exposure to other harmful substances is likely to be lower still given that e-cigarette aerosol contains far fewer toxicants and carcinogens than tobacco smoke (and those that are remain are present in lower concentrations) . This reduced exposure has been shown in artificial settings (eg, rooms with a smoking machine set up to either vape or smoke) and nonrepresentative samples, but to our knowledge no studies have examined exposure among children in natural settings using nationally representative samples of the population.…”