Overview
ISO/TR 17219:2013 is a Technical Report from ISO/TC 126 that reviews global literature on human smoking behaviour and provides recommendations for developing new machine-smoking regimes for cigarettes. Prepared by an ad hoc Smoking Behaviour Review Team, the report summarizes smoking topography studies, evaluates filter ventilation and butt length effects, and recommends candidate parameter sets that could supplement the existing ISO machine-smoking methodology (e.g., ISO 3308). As a Technical Report, ISO/TR 17219:2013 is informative and intended to guide standards development, not to impose normative requirements.
Key topics and technical scope
- Review of smoking topography: comprehensive synthesis of puff volume, puff duration, puff frequency and puff number observed in human studies across geographies and time.
- Comparison with historical machine regimes: discussion of the standard 35 ml / 2 s / 1 puff per minute regime used historically in ISO and FTC methods and limitations when representing real smoker behaviour.
- Filter ventilation and vent-hole blocking: evaluation of incidence, degree and impact of ventilation blocking on machine yields and smoker exposure.
- Butt length and consumer use: analysis of typical cigarette butt lengths achieved by smokers versus those used in analytical machine smoking.
- Nicotine intake and compensation: review of nicotine uptake, metabolism and behavioural compensation when smokers switch products.
- Recommendations and knowledge gaps: identification of maximum/minimum parameter ranges from the literature and proposals for one or more practical machine-smoking regimes to better reflect real-world behaviour.
Practical applications - who uses it and why
ISO/TR 17219:2013 is valuable to:
- Standards committees and regulators (to inform creation or amendment of machine-smoking standards and regulatory test methods)
- Test laboratories and quality-control facilities (for test method selection and interpretation of cigarette emissions)
- Tobacco manufacturers and product developers (to understand how machine regimes relate to consumer exposure and product comparisons)
- Public health researchers and policymakers (to interpret yield data relative to smoker behaviour and exposure)
- Academics studying smoking behaviour, exposure assessment and compensation phenomena.
The report helps stakeholders choose or design machine-smoking regimes that better reflect human smoking topography, improves comparability of emissions data, and highlights areas where further research is needed.
Related standards and documents
- ISO 3308 (existing standard smoking-machine parameters)
- ISO 4387 (analytical smoking; scope amendments discussed)
- National methods and profiles (FTC, CORESTA, Health Canada, MDPH)
- WHO TobReg discussions on machine smoking and product regulation
Keywords: ISO/TR 17219:2013, human smoking behaviour, machine smoking, smoking topography, puff volume, filter ventilation, cigarette butt length, ISO standard.