FDA Requires Disclosure Of Harmful Tobacco Chemicals

FDA is taking steps to provide the public with new information about the quantities of harmful or potentially harmful chemicals in tobacco products and smoke. The agency has selected 93 chemicals that cause or could cause harm to smokers—or nonsmokers exposed to smoke—from the more than 7,000 compounds found in tobacco products and smoke. FDA considers cancer, lung disease, and addiction to tobacco products as harmful effects. Tobacco manufacturers are now required to provide FDA with the quantity of each of those 93 chemicals in every tobacco product they sell in the U.S. FDA intends to make the information available to the public by April 2013. Because testing methods are not available for all of the chemicals, FDA plans to initially enforce reporting for just 20 of them. “Tobacco products are the only mass-consumed product for which consumers do not today know what is in them,” Lawrence Deyton, director of FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said at a March 30 briefing. “FDA is ending that era.”