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A Comparative Study of Non-Volatile Compounds Present in 3R4F Cigarettes and iQOS Heatsticks Utilizing GC-MS

It is now widely suggested that people who are dependent on nicotine should switch from ordinary tobacco smoking to alternative products, which at least reduce the overall harm from smoking. A number of alternatives are now popular, including electronic cigarettes and heatsticks. In this work comparative analysis of the smoke/aerosol emission from 3R4F standard cigarettes and iQOS heatsticks was undertaken. For this, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis was applied, to measure the non-volatile compounds of smoke/aerosol emission from individual samples, with the specific aim to determine their content of nicotine and selected other main components. All measurement data were collected under the Health Canada Intense (HCI) puffing regime. The most relevant findings of the present investigation can be summarized as follows. First, the number of measured aerosol components in the iQOS samples, with respect to those of 3R4F samples, was significantly lower (notably 37 versus 12 components). Second, the analysis of the iQOS and 3R4F GC-MS chromatographic fingerprints indicated a non-nicotine global component reduction (number and areas excluding nicotine) of larger than 80% for the iQOS samples in comparison to 3R4F samples. Third, the nicotine content of the iQOS aerosol was less than half that contained in the 3R4F smoke. The results from the present investigation indicate that—except for nicotine—smokers are exposed to a largely reduced number and amount of non-volatile, non-nicotine components in the iQOS heatstick aerosol, in comparison to those in the 3R4F cigarette smoke.