RESEARCH suppressed by the tobacco industry over 30 years ago is being revived by a company hoping to develop safer cigarettes.
The company claims its improved cigarette filters would reduce the risk of the serious lung disease emphysema. Its approach is just one of several strategies to develop less deadly ways of getting nicotine into the lungs. But the entire 鈥渉arm reduction鈥� approach is opposed by many campaigners, who say smokers鈥� only safe option is to quit.
The original research was carried out in 1969 by Bertram Eichel, a biochemist funded by the Council for Tobacco Research, a now-defunct arm of the tobacco industry. He found that cigarette smoke injured a type of white blood cell called leucocytes. Dysfunctional leucocytes play a key role in the destruction of the tiny sacs that make up the lungs, leading to emphysema.
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Two components in smoke, hydrogen cyanide and acrolein, seemed to do most of the damage 鈥� and Eichel found that they could be removed with an 鈥渋on exchange鈥� filter. This is a resin in which the pores have an electric charge, and so capture polar molecules passing through them. Normal cigarette filters just capture large particles.
At the time, the Council for Tobacco Research tried to hush up the findings. 鈥淚t was based on the fear of lawsuits,鈥� Eichel says. 鈥淚f you can demonstrate that tobacco contains substances which are harmful, that would put them in a very awkward position.鈥�
Eichel published his research anyway (Science, vol 166, p 1424), after which the Council stopped his funding. Now he has set up a company, Quest Research Group of East Falmouth, Massachusetts, to revive the idea and develop safer filters.
Whether the filters would be beneficial remains to be seen. The only way to tell would be to carry out clinical trials, says John Britton, a respiratory epidemiologist at the University of Nottingham in the UK. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a big maybe.鈥�
If cigarettes with Eichel鈥檚 filters are proven to be less dangerous, they could only be marketed successfully if firms were allowed to promote their products as safer than standard cigarettes, says David Sweanor, legal adviser to the Canadian Smoking and Health Action Foundation. 鈥淥therwise it鈥檚 like selling a Volvo but not being able to tell people why they would want to drive one,鈥� he says.
But the harm reduction approach is frowned on by the mainstream anti-smoking lobby, especially in the US. At a Congress committee hearing this month, US Surgeon General Richard Carmona said it would be 鈥渟wapping one carcinogenic product for another鈥�. The Federal Trade Commission, which regulates tobacco advertising, will investigate the issue later this year.
Developing better filters is just one of several harm reduction strategies (New 杏吧原创, 10 November 2001, p 28). Others include low-carcinogen tobacco and a bizarre cigarette-like device that delivers nicotine without burning most of the tobacco.