Abstract
Tobacco and tobacco smoke contain a complex mixture of over 9500 chemical compounds, many of which have been recognized as hazardous to human health by regulatory agencies. In 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration established a list of harmful and potentially harmful constituents in unburned tobacco and tobacco smoke, 79 of which are considered as carcinogens. Over the past 10 years, with advancing analytical technology, significant amounts of new data have been published, increasing our understanding of levels of carcinogens in tobacco products. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has released 35 monographs since 2012, with an increasing number of compounds in unburned tobacco and tobacco smoke classified as carcinogens. In this paper, we provide an updated list of IARC-classified carcinogens in unburned tobacco and tobacco mainstream smoke. A total of 83 carcinogens has been identified – 37 in unburned tobacco and 80 in tobacco smoke – with their occurrence levels reported since 2012. No clear decreasing trends were observed for any of these carcinogens in recent years. Surveillance of the levels of tobacco carcinogens as well as regulatory actions are needed to ensure control of their levels so that potential reduced risks of cancer and other diseases may be achieved.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 113179 |
| Journal | Food and Chemical Toxicology |
| Volume | 165 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by grant CA-81301 from the U.S. National Cancer Institute .
Funding Information:
Convincing evidence in laboratory animals in combination with an understanding of their carcinogenic mechanisms support the Group 1 classification of NNN and NNK by the IARC (Hecht, 1998; International Agency for Research on Cancer, 2007; Li and Hecht, 2022). Exposure to NNN and NNK in smokers of the Shanghai Cohort study showed a remarkable coherence with the risk of developing esophageal and lung cancer, respectively (Stepanov et al., 2014b; Yuan et al., 2011). Smokeless tobacco has been established as a cause of oral cancer; NNN is consistently found to be the most abundant oral carcinogen in these products (Hecht, 2020). It is thus critical to regulate the levels of NNN and NNK in tobacco products to reduce potential cancer risks in tobacco users who are unwilling to quit.This work was supported by grant CA-81301 from the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd
