Comparative Health Risk Assessment of Heated Tobacco Products versus Conventional Cigarettes

Abstract

Background

Smoking is the largest preventable cause of death in the world with around eight million estimated premature deaths per year. In response to the harmful effects of conventional tobacco products the tobacco industry has launched a new type of products called Heated tobacco products (HTP) and e-cigarettes, which are considered safer for human health than conventional cigarettes.

Materials and methods

The research was conducted by searching the scientific literature using platforms “Google scholar,” “PubMed” and “Science Direct.” To compare the non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic risk of HTP products and conventional cigarettes, margin of exposure and lifetime excess cancer risk were calculated using data obtained from a scientific literature search.

Results and discussion

HTP products have shown a reduced risk to human health compared to the conventional cigarettes, although they still contain compounds that can be dangerous to human health. There is not enough data obtained from independent studies that could safely indicate that these reduced amounts of toxic chemical entities in the composition of HTP do not induce any harmful effect.

Conclusion

Further research is needed to determine the harmful effects of HTP aerosol, as well as to tighten the legislation that would limit the production, import and distribution of these products worldwide until their safety for human health is confirmed with a sufficient number of transparent and representative results obtained in independent scientific studies.

Keywords:

• Conventional cigarettes
• heated tobacco products
• margin of exposure
• lifetime excess cancer risk

Declaration of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Youth of Sarajevo Canton, Bosnia and Herzegovina [grant number 27-02-11-41251-6/21] (The effect of different tobacco aerosol exposure on individual health and public health).