Urinary thioethers in low tar cigarette smokers

Abstract

The urinary elimination of thioethers has been studied according to the smoking habit in 52 subjects. Urinary thioethers (UT) increase with the number of cigarettes and this is specially noteworthy in individualised studies. As a contribution to clarify the relevance of smoking ‘low tar’ cigarettes, we performed a comparative study in six volunteers. Each subject smoked four types of cigarettes, namely brown normal-tar; brown low-tar; blond normal-tar; and blond low-tar, during one week for each type. UT were collected daily in the whole study. The statistical analysis revealed there are no differences despite the type of cigarettes. Probably the subject compensates the lower content of tar and nicotine by smoking each cigarette with more intensity, since the number of cigarettes/day remained constant for each subject. These results reveal the uncertainty of the claimed ‘healthiness’ of low tar and nicotine cigarettes.