E-cigarette puffing topography: The importance of assessing user behaviour to inform emissions testing

Analysis of the chemical composition of e-cigarette emissions is an important step in determining whether e-cigarettes offer both individual and population-level harm reduction potential. Commonly, e-cigarette emissions for chemical analysis are collected when using e-cigarettes according to standardised puffing regimens, such as those recommended by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) or the Cooperation Centre for Scientific Research Relative to Tobacco (CORESTA). While the use of such standard puffing regimens affords a degree of uniformity between studies and are also recommended by regulatory authorities who require the submission of e-cigarette emissions data to make decisions regarding allowing a product to be commercially marketed, the standardised regimens do not necessarily reflect human puffing behaviour. This can lead to under- or over-estimating real-world emissions from e-cigarettes and inaccuracy in determining their harm reduction potential. In this review, we describe how human puffing behaviour (topography) information can be collected both in the clinical laboratory and in the real world using a variety of different methodologies. We further discuss how this information can be used to dictate e-cigarette puffing regimens for collecting emissions for chemical analyses and how this may lead to better predictions both of human yields of e-cigarette emissions constituents and of risk assessments to predict e-cigarette tobacco harm reduction potential.