Chapter 3 
Table 4 
Effect of cigarette circumference on tar and nicotine in mainstream smoke 
Circumference (mm) 
Tar 
Delivery (mg) 
Nicotine 
26 
23.3 
1.56 
25 
21.5 
1.46 
24 
19.9 
1.35 
23 
18.2 
1.21 
Source: DeBardeleben et al., 1978. 
Tobacco Cut Studies have shown that modifying tobacco from fine to coarse cut 
causes the number of puffs per cigarette to increase (DeBardeleben et al., 
1978). In general, cigarettes that are filled with a more coarsely cut tobacco 
burn less efficiently than those made with fine-cut tobacco. One report, 
comparing the smoke of cigarettes filled with coarse-cut tobacco (1.27 mm) 
with smoke from cigarettes made with fine-cut tobacco (0.42 mm), 
showed only slight differences in smoke yields (Spears, 1974). However, 
a comparison of tars from cigarettes with given tobacco cut at rates of 
20, 30, or 50 cuts per inch (1.27, 0.85, and 0.51 mm, respectively) showed 
in a bioassay that the finer the cut of the tobacco, the lower the 
tumorigenicity of the resulting tar (Wynder and Hoffmann, 1965). 
Packing Density Increasing the mass of the tobacco in a cigarette — increasing the 
packing density — causes yields of tar and nicotine in the smoke to rise. 
However, packing more than 1.0 g of tobacco into an 85-mm cigarette causes 
the yields of tar and nicotine in the smoke to decrease, most likely because 
of increased retention by the tobacco acting as a filter (Figure 6). 
Tobacco Pesticides Since 1969 the use of chlorinated pesticides has been banned 
in the cultivation of tobacco in the United States. As a result, 1,1,1-trichloro- 
2-(4,4'-dichlorodiphenyl)ethane (DDT) and l,l,-dichloro-2-2(4,4'- 
dichlorodiphenyl)ethane (DDD) in tobacco and in cigarette smoke have 
drastically decreased. In the tobacco of a cigarette made in 1965, 13.4 ppm 
DDT and 20.2 ppm DDD were measured, and in the tobacco of the leading 
cigarette brand made in 1993, only 0.02 ppm DDT and 0.013 ppm DDD 
were detected, a decrease of more than 98 percent (Djordjevic et al., 1995). 
The small amounts of residual DDT and DDD in more recently produced 
cigarettes appear to originate from imported tobaccos used for blended 
cigarettes. 
It was reported in 1981 that U.S. tobacco contains 250 ppb of the 
carcinogenic N-nitrosodiethanolamine (NDELA). This nitrosamine is formed 
by N-nitrosation of the secondary amine diethanolamine during tobacco 
27 
