Abstract
A considerable amount of epidemiological research over the past 60 years has shown tobacco smoking to be the cause of a variety of serious diseases such as lung cancer, emphysema, chronic bronchitis etc. Over the past years, the efforts are focused on the development and promotion of new tobacco products, such as heat not burn or electronic cigarettes, etc. According to published data, the use of such products among young people presents an increasing trend and surpassed traditional cigarette use in adolescents. These novel tobacco products are marketed as less harmful for human’s health. However, the determination of their long term effect on human’s health is still not possible.
The necessity to collect further data that would help to clarify how these new tobacco products affect human’s health is more than obvious. This is the scope of the present doctoral thesis, focusing to study the emissions of chemical compounds released from novel tobacco products. The first phase will concern in depth literature review about the emissions of novel tobacco products.
The first experimental phase will be the design of a specific experimental set-up in order to produce, in laboratory conditions, emissions from all kind of tobacco products under study. Then, the analytical techniques, such as liquid chromatography (HPLC), ionic chromatography (IC), gas chromatography and mass chromatography (GC-MS), necessary for the collection and analysis of these emissions will be developed.
The study of the emissions will include a parametric analysis of the chemical constituents and the conditions of use of these products. In the case of electronic cigarettes, this will be different e-liquid composition, temperatures of vaporization and metal coils, whereas in the case of heat not burn products it will be different tobacco composition and heating temperature.
The results will be a detailed description of tobacco products emissions in relation to the composition and the operating conditions.
Advisory Committee
Efthimios Zervas, Professor, Hellenic Open University
Theophilos Ioannides, Research Director, FORTH/ICE-HT
Paraskevi Katsaounou, Professor, National and Kapodistrian University of Athen