Philip Morris International has developed a heat-not-burn tobacco heating system (THS 2.2) that produces an aerosol without combustion. Adult smokers are anticipated to use the product with differing behaviors, such as puffing volume or puffing frequency, therefore it was important to find an easy way to study how users are exposed to the aerosol constituents. Thus, the intended outcome of this study was to propose and assess a simple approach for the estimation of THS users’ exposure to harmful and potentially harmful constituents (HPHCs).
THS operates using tobacco sticks (
The regular non-mentholated
Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) combined with a stepwise approach was used for selecting models describing the relationship between Nicotine MP and specific aerosol constituents. The stepwise approach interactively explores which amongst various tested predictors provides a good fit. The developed models showed good adjusted coefficients of determination (i.e., R2 adj. ≥ 0.75) for 28 out of the 43 investigated HPHCs.
Previously published studies showed that actual MLE can be estimated from cigarette filter analysis. This study demonstrated that the analysis of nicotine in THS mouthpiece (filter section) corresponded to an estimation of the upper limits of MLE, in line with maximum possible usage conditions.