Herbal cigarettes are not safer than regular tobacco alternatives

Herbal cigarettes, widely sold in India and abroad as natural, tobacco-free, and even therapeutic alternatives to conventional cigarettes, are not safer than regular tobacco cigarettes. They produce emissions that can be comparably or even more damaging than tobacco smoke. That is the conclusion of a new study conducted by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN), in collaboration with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

The study compared emissions from two of India's best-selling tobacco brands and four popular herbal varieties containing combinations of basil, clove, cinnamon, mint, green tea, water lily, and chamomile. Notably, two of the herbal brands utilized tendu (ebony) leaves as wrappers, identical to those used in bidis, India's most widely consumed smoking product.

To isolate the emissions, each cigarette was combusted inside a sealed, automated two-chamber rig designed to replicate human inhalation rate. The cigarette emission was funnelled into real-time instruments, and filter samples were collected for physical and chemical characterisation of particles. As a proxy for the potential toxicity of emissions, the oxidative potential of the collected samples was quantified.

Prof Sameer Patel, Assistant Professor at IITGN's Department of Civil Engineering and Chemical Engineering, and co-coordinator of Dr Kiran C Patel Centre for Sustainable DevelopmentOur findings challenge the widely held belief that tobacco-free means risk-free. Emissions from herbal cigarettes are comparable to or exceeded those from tobacco cigarettes on nearly every metric we measured. Leaf-wrapped herbal variants turned out to be the most hazardous of all the samples tested."

The team also measured a property called oxidative potential (OP), which quantifies the smoke's capacity to generate reactive oxygen species, aggressive molecules that drive inflammation, lung tissue remodelling, and the vascular changes underlying heart disease. Particulate matter from herbal cigarettes recorded significantly higher OP than that from tobacco cigarettes. Tendu-leaf-wrapped variants, in particular, showed OP roughly 49 per cent higher than paper-wrapped versions. Interestingly, chemical analysis revealed one herbal cigarette, filled with basil, had the highest lead concentration, despite being marketed as "chemical-free with 100% natural filler for a healthy lifestyle."

The paper's findings coincide with the theme of World No Tobacco Day on May 31, "Unmasking the appeal: countering nicotine and tobacco addiction." With the herbal cigarette category potentially attracting younger consumers and first-time smokers using wellness-oriented language, there is an urgent need to develop frameworks to regulate the marketing of tobacco alternatives. This study adds to a growing body of scientific evidence that could help inform evidence-based regulation and public-health discussions around alternative smoking products.

Source:

Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar

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