Is it possible to compare harmfulness of two cigarettes? ............................................... need an experiment to determine which among the chosen cigarettes is more harmful. i think experiment must be based on nicotine content... so i need to test 2 samples nicotine and determine which 1 is more harmful..... (i dont have to really perform experiment,just have 2 write for my +1 bio. proj) HELP APRECIATED Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
You could determine nicotine concentration by extracting it in xylene, then running a Gas Chromatograph on the result from the tobacco. But nicotine isn't the only harmful chemical in a cigarette. There are other things like CO that are produced in the burning. To compare all the different factors would require a series of tests for each of the possible chemical compounds, as well as to determine the concentration of these chemicals as they come out the filter portion. While it is a small distinction, it is possible for the worse cigarette in pure burning to be safer after filtration. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187853521000211X
Difficult, without assuming "harmfulness" equals nicotine content, tar content, or whatever. Just for fun (!), maybe consider an epidemiological approach. An ideal hypothetical approach might be a double-blind RCT: Select 1000 people. Randomly allocate them to two groups (or maybe three) Group 1: If a person in this group ever smokes, they must smoke Cigarette type A Group 2: If a person in this group ever smokes, they must smoke Cigarette type B Group 3: People in this group can smoke whatever they want, or not. Monitor the people for 50 years. Compare mortality and morbidity between the groups. Be sure to specify exactly how participants will be selected, what variables will be compensated for (if any), how morbidity will be measured, how blinding will be achieved, how losses to followup will be managed, and your sources of funding. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! More seriously, you might like to look at this 2004 paper from the British Medical Journal (it's fairly famous, but for the wrong reason): Cigarette tar yields in relation to mortality from lung cancer in the cancer prevention study II prospective cohort, 1982-8 On the other hand, if you're after more immediate biological measures, I'd be looking at things like heart rate, oxygen saturation, carboxyhemoglobin, blood pressure. I.e. focus on the measureable effects on human biology, not on the cigarette chemistry.
Pete is right. You'd have to actually do the study itself to determine for sure which one is more harmful. Two many variables complicates matters.
