BRITISH American Tobacco has in the past developed so-called 鈥渆lastic鈥� cigarettes, which when smoked delivered higher doses of tar and nicotine than stated on the packet.
So claim David Hammond and colleagues at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, who reviewed previously secret BAT company documents. The documents show that when smoked, the cigarettes produced more nicotine and tar than they did when tested on equipment from ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, say the researchers, and that BAT pursued this strategy despite ethical concerns raised by its own senior scientists (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(06)68077-X).
Teresa La Thangue of BAT says smokers make up for low levels of nicotine by taking longer drags. She adds that BAT has worked with the World Health Organization to develop a new ISO standard.
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