Analysis of Toxic Elements in Tobacco Product Smoke and Aerosols and Assessment of Health Risks from Chronic Inhalation

Dear Colleagues,

Metals and metalloids are inorganic in nature, although they are transported in smoke and other tobacco product aerosols that contain complex mixtures of organic substances as well. Challenges surrounding high-quality analyses of metals and metalloids in these aerosol matrices include the low concentrations of some metals and metal oxides in mixed organic/inorganic matrices that may have the consistency of tar, the cost of machines that can provide standardized conditions for the collection of smoke/aerosol generated by the products, the difficulty of preventing sample contamination with environmentally ubiquitous metals and metalloids, the limited number of trapping materials and devices that are relatively free of leachable metals, and analytical interferences with analyses of some metals and metalloids.

Challenges for the assessment of health risks from chronic inhalation of toxic metals and metalloids from tobacco products include sparsity of data on chronic inhalation of some metals, the presence of toxic organic substances that are inhaled along with the inorganic substances, and difficulties surrounding assessment of health risks resulting from the accumulation of some metals in bone and soft tissues. Despite these challenges, biomonitoring studies have shown that some metals in smoke and aerosols from tobacco products may contribute significantly to individual health risks including cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and other chronic diseases.

We are pleased to invite you to submit manuscripts for a Special Issue of Toxics on the toxicology and assessment of health risks from chronic inhalation of emissions from tobacco products, including well-validated methodologies and results of clean sample collection and elemental analysis of smoke from combustible tobacco products, “heat, not burn” products, or aerosol from electronic nicotine delivery systems (electronic cigarettes or ENDS) that provide data for toxicological and health risk assessments.

The expense, site requirements, and requirements for analytical expertise related to acquiring equipment with the capability to obtain smoke and aerosol using standardized conditions followed by clean sample preparation and well-validated analytical data have limited the amount of data available to form a foundation on which to estimate exposures and calculate health risks. As a result, there are difficulties with merging biomonitoring and product emission data correlated with exposures with calculations of health risks that are consequences of the use of various tobacco products. This Special Issue will address the deficiency of data in this area by expanding the presently available product emission and biomonitoring data and by providing a platform for manuscripts on toxicological and health risk assessment calculations that are dependent on this data.

For this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following: toxicology, health risk assessments related to the chronic inhalation exposures to inorganic particles and substances transported in tobacco product emissions, and well-validated sample collection and analytical methodology for the production of biomonitoring and product data in support of toxicological and health risk assessments.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Richard Steven Pappas
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Toxics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.