PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - El-Hellani, Ahmad
AU  - Watson, Clifford H
AU  - Huang, Michelle
AU  - Wilson, Clark W
AU  - Fleshman, Clint C
AU  - Petitti, Ryan
AU  - Pancake, Mary
AU  - Bennett, Chad
AU  - Keller-Hamilton, Brittney L
AU  - Jones, Jeremy
AU  - Tran, Hang
AU  - Bravo Cardenas, Roberto
AU  - Mays, Darren
AU  - Ye, Wei
AU  - Borthwick, Robert P
AU  - Schaff, Jason
AU  - Williamson, Raymond L
AU  - Wagener, Theodore L.
AU  - Brinkman, Marielle C
TI  - Universal smoking machine adaptor for tobacco product testing
AID  - 10.1136/tc-2023-058428
DP  - 2024 Jul 15
TA  - Tobacco Control
PG  - tc-2023-058428
4099  - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2024/07/15/tc-2023-058428.short
4100  - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2024/07/15/tc-2023-058428.full
AB  - Significance Historically, tobacco product emissions testing using smoking machines has largely focused on combustible products, such as cigarettes and cigars. However, the popularity of newer products, such as electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), has complicated emissions testing because the products’ mouth-end geometries do not readily seal with existing smoking and vaping machines. The demand for emissions data on popularly used products has led to inefficient and non-standardised solutions, such as laboratories making their geometry-specific custom adaptors and/or employing flexible tubing, for each unique mouth-end geometry tested. A user-friendly, validated, universal smoking machine adaptor (USMA) is needed for testing the variety of tobacco products reflecting consumer use, including e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products, cigarettes, plastic-tipped cigarillos and cigars.Methods A prototype USMA that is compatible with existing smoking/vaping machines was designed and fabricated. The quality of the seal between the USMA and different tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, cigars and cigarillos, was evaluated by examining the leak rate.Results Unlike commercial, product-specific adaptors, the USMA seals well with a wide range of tobacco product mouth-end geometries and masses. This includes e-cigarettes with non-cylindrical mouth ends and cigarillos with cuboid-like plastic tips. USMA leak rates were lower than or equivalent to commercial, product-specific adaptors.Conclusion This report provides initial evidence that the USMA seals reliably with a variety of tobacco product mouth-end geometries and can be used with existing linear smoking/vaping machines to potentially improve the precision, repeatability and reproducibility of machine smoke yield data. Accurate and reproducible emissions testing is critical for regulating tobacco products.