British American Tobacco is recruiting 250 volunteers in Germany to test experimental cigarettes designed to produce less toxic smoke than conventional products, the Financial Times reports.

The smokers' biological reactions will be analysed through a battery of scientific tests. The study in Hamburg is believed to be the first modern clinical trial of tobacco treated to be safer when smoked. BAT's long-term business plan is to produce cigarettes that can be marketed as less likely to cause disease, with solid evidence to support the claim.
The tobacco industry has been wary of making claims about less harmful products since the debacle of low-tar and light cigarettes in the 1970s and 80s. These were promoted as being safer on the basis of lab tests with "smoking machines" – but turned out to be just as dangerous as traditional products because consumers puffed harder to get their hit of smoke and nicotine.
BAT has made three "prototype combustible products" for the German trial. They incorporate tobacco that has been processed in several ways to generate fewer "toxicants" as it burns, including treatment with enzymes similar to those in biological washing powders. The prototypes also have new filters, with activated charcoal and resins to absorb harmful chemicals.
Momentum Pharma Services, a contract research organisation that normally works for drug companies, is carrying out the GBP 6 million analysis. It has been registered on an independent clinical trials database – a first for BAT – and results will be published in a scientific journal next year. Although the tobacco industry has been investigating cigarette safety for decades, science has only now reached a stage at which researchers can discover how to make smoking genuinely safer, said David O'Reilly, BAT head of public health and scientific affairs. "There are 100 or so toxicants in cigarette smoke and more than 30 significant diseases associated with smoking," he said.
The trial will show whether and how much the prototype cigarettes reduce smokers' exposure to toxicants, by measuring the levels of associated chemicals known as "biomarkers" in their blood, urine and saliva. (pi)