Tobacco

$5 million project aims to improve e-cigarette testing

For decades, tobacco companies and researchers have used specialized smoking machines to test the physical and chemical properties of cigarette smoke — an important step in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory process. The machines work by essentially “puffing” a cigarette and capturing the smoke onto a filter, which can be analyzed to determine levels of various toxins in the smoke.

Vaping could nearly triple the chance of smoking in teens

A new study offers strong evidence that kids who use e-cigarettes are more likely to take up smoking or smokeless tobacco, researchers say. 

Teen boys who vaped were almost three times as likely to start smoking as other teen boys with similar risk profiles and more than two times as likely to try smokeless tobacco, the study from The Ohio State University found. The research was published online this week in the journal Addictive Behaviors. 

Warning: tobacco products kill

Use of tobacco products grew 38.3 percent among high school students in 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

College of Public Health senior research scientist Marielle Brinkman has worked over 18 years quantifying human exposures to the toxic chemicals from tobacco product use to support the regulation of these products.