NEWS
THE VYPE DOSSIER
Proving the reduced risk potential of an e-cigarette
By Dr Marina Murphy
W
e sell Vype ePen so not surprisingly, we spend a lot
of time and money testing it. The result is that we
have created the most comprehensive dataset of test
results for any e-cigarette.
We have tested everything from how people use the
e-cigarette, which includes looking at the minutiae of how often
they puff, how deeply and for how long; to the content of the
vapour, to what that vapour does to cells in the lab and many
other tests in which we compare this vapour and what it does
to smoke.
The results of any one of these tests on its own doesn’t mean
very much, but when you take them all together, you may start
to get a feel for the big picture. This picture reveals a very real
potential for this product to be a substantially reduced health risk
compared to traditional cigarettes.
This ties in with what several high-profile public health authorities
such as Public Health England and the Royal College of
Physicians have said in the recent past, i.e. that they believe
e-cigarettes are likely to offer in the order of 95% reduced health
risk compared to conventional cigarettes.
While it is massively reassuring to have a dossier of test results
that would seem to support that conclusion, not all products are
the same. That said, given the pace of innovation in this category,
it would be unreasonable, unrealistic and unaffordable to do this
kind of testing for every new type of product.
For those jurisdictions likely to require this kind of testing (like
the US), there should be a way to bridge data from one product
to another fundamentally similar type of product, especially
between generations of the same product. That way, new tests
would not need to be performed every time a well-characterised
product is tweaked, which would mean that new products, with
better performance, better delivery and improved harm reduction
credentials could be brought to market more quickly without the
need to duplicate tests.
How was the Vype ePen dossier created?
This dataset was created using data collected from a series of
scientific tests specifically developed by scientists at British
American Tobacco to assess the products we are developing.
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