FIRMS 'SUPPRESSED SAFER CIGARETTES'

SCORES of inventions for safer cigarettes have been patented by
tobacco companies but never used because of industry fears that they
would damage demand for the conventional product, anti-smoking
charities claimed yesterday.

Ideas that might have saved thousands of lives range from improved
filters to cut the quantity of noxious chemicals reaching the lungs,
to the addition of catalysts to change the chemical composition of the
smoke. They have all been explored over the past 25 years.

The inventions have never reached the shops because selling a "safer"
cigarette created the legal and marketing problem of admitting that
existing cigarettes were unsafe, the Imperial Cancer Research Fund
(ICRF) and Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) said in a joint report.

The claims were dismissed by the tobacco industry yesterday. A
spokesman said the fact that an idea was patented didn't mean it would
work in practice, or be acceptable to consumers.

Investigations by the charities have uncovered 57 patents lodged with
the US patent office since the early Seventies and over 100 more
submitted to its UK equivalent. They include designs for elaborate
devices such as the "cigarettepipe with purifier" which incorporates a
catalytic afterburner to ensure that incompletely burnt hydrocarbons
are burnt more completely, reducing the tar levels.

The cigarettepipe would have needed a powerful suck to draw air
through it, creating what is known in the trade as a "hernia effect",
and would have left smokers with four inches of hot porcelain and
metal to dispose of, making it impractical as well as expensive.
However other, simpler, innovations such as the addition of catalysts
to the tobacco itself, which work in the same way as catalytic
converters in cars to absorb carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides, could
have cut the incidence of disease caused by smoking, which claims
120,000 lives a year in the UK.

Confidential tobacco industry documents released during litigation in
the US reveal the companies' reluctance to introduce these measures.
An internal memo written in 1986 by Patrick Sheehy, the chief
executive of British American Tobacco, said: "In attempting to develop
a 'safe' cigarette you are, by implication, in danger of being
interpreted as accepting the current product is unsafe and this is not
a position that I think we should take."

Dr Martin Jarvis, of the ICRF health behaviour unit, said smoke
contained 4,000 chemicals, in addition to the nicotine that smokers
want, which form the sticky residue in the lungs known as tar. "The
cigarette is like a dirty syringe for taking nicotine," he said. "What
we now know is that the tobacco companies could have made it less
dirty. The current products cause premature death for half of all
long-term smokers, so even a small improvement could save thousands of
lives." He said the emphasis on "low-tar" cigarettes was misleading
because evidence showed that smokers compensated by puffing harder and
covering up air holes in the filters with their

fingers.

Clive Bates, director of ASH, said the companies should be required by
the European Union to disclose all the hazardous constituents of
tobacco smoke and then reduce them.

However, medical specialists warned there was no such thing as a safe
cigarette. Dr Angela Hilton, of the British Thoracic Society, said:
"Although we welcome any steps to make cigarettes cleaner, the only
way to reduce smoking-related illness and death is to increase the
numbers of people stopping smoking for good."

John Carlisle, a spokesman for the Tobacco Manufacturers Association,
said the industry had worked with governments over the past 20 years
to make cigarettes safer and some innovations had been accepted while
others had not. "Patents are lodged day in and day out but the fact
that they are there doesn't mean that they work, are proven or will
meet consumer desires. We will carry our research to produce
cigarettes that are satisfactory for our customers and meet the
requirements of government."

LIFE-SAVING PATENTS

Liggett and Meyers, US, 1972: Chemical filter containing a mixed-metal
carbonate; reduces hydrogen cyanide.

Philip Morris, US, 1981: New smoking material formed by heating
carbohydrate and mixing it with a tobacco slurry; produces less tar
and nicotine.

Fabrique De Tabac Reunies, Switzerland, 1986: Use of micro-organisms
to improve tobacco; the micro-organisms consume nitrates and ammonium
compounds in the tobacco, converting them to amino acids and proteins
which are less harmful.

Japan Tobacco Inc, 1987: Cigarette incorporating fire retardant in its
skin; reduces the delivery of tar.

No company, 1988: Filter made from the fruiting body of a fungus,
Bacidiomycetes; absorbs tar, nicotine and other harmful particulates
making the tobacco smoke taste light and mild. The filter is contained
in a separate cigarette holder.

Rothmans, Benson and Hedges, Canada, 1996: Flavour reset technique;
ensures that as the cigarette is smoked, flavour is maintained at a
lower tar level, reducing tar delivered to the lungs.