Mw. Ogden et P. Martin, THE USE OF CIGARETTE EQUIVALENTS TO ASSESS ENVIRONMENTAL TOBACCO-SMOKE EXPOSURE, Environment international, 23(1), 1997, pp. 123-138
The development and use of the cigarette equivalent (CE) concept for e
stimating exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is reviewed. C
E is a legitimate conceptual device for reporting and comparing ETS ex
posures. However, extension of the CE concept to predicting potential
increases in health risk is fraught with numerous assumptions and is,
therefore, not as often used or as well accepted. Mathematically, the
CE concept relates the magnitude of a nonsmoker's ETS exposure to the
magnitude of mainstream smoke inhaled by a smoker. Historically, the C
E concept has overestimated nonsmoker exposure in that it has ignored
smokers' exposure to their own ETS. The equation defining CE exposure
has been modified to include a term for the relative exposure of smoke
rs versus nonsmokers which corrects this anomaly. To be meaningful, th
e CE equation requires as input both the ETS exposure concentration to
which nonsmokers are typically exposed and the mainstream yield for t
ypical cigarette brand styles. To date, this type of information has e
xisted for only a few ETS tracers (e.g., nicotine and respirable suspe
nded particles (RSP)). In an attempt to partially fill this void, main
stream smoke yields of several tracers used to assess ETS exposure wer
e determined for the 50 leading U.S. cigarette brand styles representi
ng 65% of cigarettes marketed in the U.S. during 1991. ETS tracers and
other endpoints included tar, nicotine, ultraviolet particulate matte
r (UVPM), fluorescent particulate matter (FPM), solanesol, and scopole
tin. Sales-weighted, arithmetic mean yields in mainstream smoke on a p
er cigarette basis were: tar, 13.8 mg; nicotine, 0.98 mg; UVPM, 10.42
mg; FPM, 7.83 mg; solanesol, 403 mu g; and scopoletin, 14.4 mu g. Thes
e results are used in conjunction with ETS concentration data for the
same markers obtained in several large ETS exposure-monitoring surveys
conducted in the U.S. among nonsmokers. Typical home and workplace CE
exposures are both shown to be less than one cigarette per year for a
ll tobacco-selective analytes studied. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Sci
ence Ltd.