TUESDAY, Feb. 7, 2006 (HealthDay News) -- Cigarette maker British American Tobacco (BAT) developed a strategy to conceal the toxicity of its cigarettes, according to a study published online Tuesday in The Lancet.
Canadian researchers at the University of Waterloo reviewed internal company documents and found that BAT developed cigarettes that produced low yields of nicotine and tar under standard laboratory testing protocols but, in fact, delivered much higher levels of tar and nicotine to real-life smokers.
The documents show that BAT was aware that human smokers typically draw puff volumes almost twice as large as the International Standards Smoking (ISO) machine used in testing protocols. BAT sought to maximize the discrepancy between the low machine yields -- which are often printed on cigarette packages and used in marketing campaigns -- and the levels of tar and nicotine actually inhaled by smokers, the researchers said.
These cigarettes were marketed to health-concerned smokers as low-tar alternatives.
BAT used this product strategy despite the health risks to smokers, and ignored ethical concerns voiced by its own senior scientists, the study found.
"Overall, these documents depict a deliberate strategy whereby BAT and ITL (Imperial Tobacco Limited) designed products that would fool their consumers and regulators into thinking these products were safer or less hazardous when they were not," the study authors wrote.
"Moreover, this product strategy remains in place today, as does the tool of its deception, the ISO cigarette testing protocols. The current review leaves little doubt that the ISO standards should be discarded in favor of new standards that meet the needs of consumers and regulators, rather than those of the tobacco industry."
More information
The U.S. National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion outlines the health effects of smoking.