Brand Cigarillos: Low Price but High Particulate Matter Levels—Is Their Favorable Taxation in the European Union Justified?

Background: Second hand smoke (ETS)-associated particulate matter (PM) contributes considerably to indoor air contamination and constitutes a health risk for passive smokers. Easy to measure, PM is a useful parameter to estimate the dosage of ETS that passive smokers are exposed to. Apart from its suitability as a surrogate parameter for ETS-exposure, PM itself affects human morbidity and mortality in a dose-dependent manner. We think that ETS-associated PM should be considered an independent hazard factor, separately from the many other known harmful compounds of ETS. We believe that brand-specific and tobacco-product-specific differences in the release of PM matter and that these differences are of public interest. Methods: To generate ETS of cigarettes and cigarillos as standardized and reproducible as possible, an automatic second hand smoke emitter (AETSE) was developed and placed in a glass chamber. L&M cigarettes (“without additives”, “red label”, “blue label”), L&M filtered cigarillos (“red”) and 3R4F standard research cigarettes (as reference) were smoked automatically according to a self-developed, standardized protocol until the tobacco product was smoked down to 8 mm distance from the tipping paper of the filter. Results: Mean concentration (Cmean) and area under the curve (AUC) in a plot of PM(2.5) against time were measured, and compared. CmeanPM(2.5) were found to be 518 μg/m(3) for 3R4F cigarettes, 576 μg/m(3) for L&M “without additives” (“red”), 448 μg/m(3) for L&M “blue label”, 547 μg/m(3) for L&M “red label”, and 755 μg/m(3) for L&M filtered cigarillos (“red”). AUCPM2.5-values were 208,214 μg/m(3)·s for 3R4F reference cigarettes, 204,629 μg/m(3)·s for L&M “without additives” (“red”), 152,718 μg/m(3)·s for L&M “blue label”, 238,098 μg/m(3)·s for L&M “red label” and 796,909 μg/m(3)·s for L&M filtered cigarillos (“red”). Conclusion: Considering the large and significant differences in particulate matter emissions between cigarettes and cigarillos, we think that a favorable taxation of cigarillos is not justifiable.