A French member of the European Parliament has asked the European Commission whether it is of a mind to encourage member states to assess the toxicity of the air in industrial areas.
Joëlle Mélin’s question was inspired by reports of poor air quality at Étang de Berre, which is in the south of France and which comprises one of the largest industrial areas in Europe, with more than 200 factories.
‘It turns out that, in 2010, the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance highlighted an excessive number of hospitalizations for cardiovascular conditions and for multiple illnesses west of Étang de Berre,’ Mélin said in a preamble to her question.
‘In January 2017, new information emerged from the community-based participatory environmental health survey (CBPEH), which noted the high likelihood of a link “between the illnesses and industrial pollution”.
‘However, in 2011, the Eco-citizen Institute launched campaigns to measure the air quality, which resulted in it noting that the air around the industrial area “was made up of 80 percent ultra-fine particulate matter and [that] the chemical composition of the air pollutants was extremely complex”.
‘Ultra-fine particulate matter is the most dangerous for our health because it gets deep into our bodies.
‘However, if Air Paca [a non-profit association that manages the air quality survey network in south-eastern France’s Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur region] does not measure it, it is because European legislation does not require member states to measure the levels of ultra-fine particulate matter.
‘Therefore, we would like to know whether the Commission wishes to encourage member states to measure the levels of ultra-fine particulate matter in order to assess toxicity of the air in industrial areas in more detail.’
Tag: France
Not-so-fine particles
Taken to the cleaners
France’s junior environment minister Brune Poirson has warned the tobacco industry that the government will force it to get involved in the collection and elimination of its waste if it doesn’t come up with alternative solutions by September, according to a Reuters story relayed by the TMA.
Paris alone collects and disposes of 350 tonnes of discarded cigarette butts annually, despite the provision of wall-mounted ashtrays and the threat of a €68 (US$80) fine for those caught littering.
The ministry estimates that 40 percent of the 30 billion butts thrown away in France every year end up on beaches and in forests, rivers and the sea. “The ministry will not be brutal on the method, but will be firm on the objectives,” said Poirson. “Pollution is major, so the commitments cannot be minor.
A battle seems to be looming.
British American Tobacco’s public affairs director Eric Sensi-Minautier was quoted as saying that it was not up to companies, smokers or citizens to pay, via additional taxes, for the cost linked to the clean-up of cigarette butts.
And Imperial Brands said that it already encouraged smokers to dispose of butts responsibly.Huge fall in smoking
The number of daily smokers in France fell by one million between 2016 and 2017, according to a story on euronews.com citing the results of a new survey by the country’s public health agency.
This fall, which meant that the incidence of smoking among people 18-75 years of age went from 29.4 percent to 26.9 percent, was reportedly described by Public Health France as historic.
The survey found also that, for the first time since 2000, there was a ‘notable decline’ in daily smoking among the ‘most disadvantaged’ smokers, including low-income earners and the unemployed.
French Health Minister Agnes Buzyn was quoted as saying that anti-smoking measures, including the so-called “sin” tax on nicotine, standardized packaging and health warnings, were largely responsible for the “encouraging” trend.
Sharing the news on Twitter, Buzyn wrote: “Good news that strengthens my commitment to the prevention and health of all”.
Buzyn plans to raise the price of a pack of cigarettes to €10 by 2020, up from almost €8 today after a series of hikes in recent years.
It was necessary “to continue this major fight against one of the biggest scourges of public health,” she said.
Meanwhile, according to an RFI story relayed by the US-based TMA, Buzyn said the so-called “sin” tax on nicotine was largely to thank for the trend, boosted by state-reimbursed cessation counselling and nicotine patches, standardized packaging and health warnings.
But the UK-based Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association earlier this month quoted Buzyn, as saying that: “Plain packaging did not contribute to the decrease of official tobacco sales”.Springtime for CORESTA
CORESTA, the Co-operation Centre for Scientific Research Relative to Tobacco, is returning to China for its 2018 Congress.
Twenty years after the first Congress to be held in China was hosted by the China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC) in 1988 in Guangzhou, and 10 after the 2008 Congress was held in Shanghai, CORESTA is again turning to China; this time to the ‘world capital city of tobacco’, Kunming.
Kunming, which is the capital of Yunnan Province, is known also as the City of Eternal Spring – a reference to its year-long mild, sunny climate.
The Congress is due to be hosted by the CNTC and held on October 22-26 at the recently-built Intercontinental Hotel.
The theme of the 2018 Congress is Science and Innovation: addressing the needs.
According to a recent CORESTA press note; in line with this theme, CORESTA’s Scientific Commission wants the event to be an opportunity for delegates to share their experience with the broad scientific community, within and beyond the tobacco perspective.
‘Workshops will be arranged to foster open dialogue on crop protection, biotechnologies, product risk assessment and biomarkers,’ the note said.
‘This approach will provide valuable information to all stakeholders in the increasingly challenging regulatory environment.
‘Latest updates and scientific achievements and findings will be presented to the benefit of both experienced and new scientists.
‘A CORESTA Congress is always an invaluable opportunity for building links and networking between generations of scientists.’
The Congress program is due to be made available at www.coresta.org at end of June.
CORESTA is an association whose purpose is to promote international co-operation in scientific research relative to tobacco and its derived products.
The association organizes yearly conferences (congresses are held every two years) where hundreds of tobacco breeders, agronomists, biologists and plant experts on the one hand, and physicists, chemists, analysts, toxicologists, finished-product-related experts, regulators and authorities on the other hand, meet to present, share and discuss studies and findings.
CORESTA activities cover all aspects of tobacco, from the crop to the usage of the derived products.
During the sessions, CORESTA working groups also present reports on their work, achievements and projects.CORESTA reporting
The CORESTA Secretariat has given details of the documents that it has published and the projects that it has launched since March.
The following documents have been published and can be downloaded from the Documents section of the CORESTA website at www.coresta.org.- Report “Use of Capillary GC Columns for the Determination of Water in Cigarette Mainstream Smoke”
(2018-03-13) (RAC-157-CTR) - Report “10th Collaborative Study (2017) for Physical Parameters of Cigarettes and Filters”
(2018-03-13) (PTM-122-CTR) - Report “2017 Collaborative Study on Ammonia and Benzo[a]pyrene in Tobacco Products”
(2018-03-19) (TTPA-150-1-CTR) - Method No. 79 “Determination of Ammonia in Tobacco and Tobacco Products by Ion Chromatographic Analysis”
(2018-03-19) (TTPA-150-2-CRM-79) - Method No. 82 “Determination of Benzo[a]pyrene in Tobacco Products by GC-MS”
(2018-03-19) (TTPA-150-3-CRM-82) - Report “2015 Collaborative Study on Ammonia in Mainstream Cigarette Smoke”
(2018-03-23) (SMA-046-2-CTR) - Method No. 87 “Determination of Nicotine in Tobacco Products by GC/MS”
(2018-04-27) (RAC-TTPA-056-2-CRM-87) - Report “Proficiency Study of Menthol in Cigarettes and Cut Filler”
(2018-05-03) (RAC-116-0-CTR)
PROJECTS
A full list of active projects is available on the CORESTA website under the Study Groups/Active Projects section:- Project 178: EVAP SG – Technical Guide for Designing E-Vapour Products and E-Liquids Stability Studies
- Project 180: CORESTA Board – Presentation at the Rhodia Acetow 11th Cigarette Filter Colloquium in Freiburg, Germany, April 2018
- Project 181: IVT SG – Presentation at the 2018 Genetic Toxicology Association Meeting in Newark, DE, USA, May 2018
- Project 182: PUB SG – Factors to Consider in Arriving at Puffing Regime to Represent Intense ENDS Use (commentary for Journal publication)
- Project 183: CORESTA Agro/Phyto – Revision Guide No. 13 – Guidance for Sampling the Tobacco Leaf Supply Chain
- Project 184: EVAP SG – Proficiency Study on the Determination of Metal Compounds in E-Liquids
- Project 185: AA SG – Revision of CORESTA Guide No. 5 Technical Note #01 Maleic Hydrazide
- Report “Use of Capillary GC Columns for the Determination of Water in Cigarette Mainstream Smoke”
Passing the butt
The French government wants the tobacco industry to devise a way of disposing of cigarette butts in an environment-friendly manner, according to a story in The Local.
It is particularly concerned about the estimated 30 billion butts that are carelessly thrown away by smokers and that end up littering streets.
The government’s new anti-waste plan, which was announced on Monday, includes 50 measures to help clean up the streets, one of which involves persuading tobacco manufacturers to launch a recycling scheme and to participate financially in collection efforts.
The government is suggesting that tobacco companies increase the retail price of cigarettes by a few centimes a pack as part of an ‘eco-participation’ scheme.
The Local story said that such schemes already existed in France in respect of other products, but the examples it gave, furniture, appliances and electronic goods, did not include any other FMCGs.
But convincing tobacco companies might not be easy given that the government is raising cigarette taxes and, therefore, prices.
Eric Sensi-Minautier, head of communications at British American Tobacco Europe West, reportedly told Le Parisien that whereas his company understood the concern of the authorities, the problem arose from a lack of civic behavior on the part of some consumers.
“Under the pretext of the environment, this is actually a new tobacco tax,” he was quoted as saying. “Making consumers pay for the bad behavior of a few is not the answer.”
Chimirec, a company that specializes in the collection of hazardous waste and that is responsible for gathering butts from collection points around the Paris business district of La Defense, said that the butts were incinerated because the volumes were too low to make it profitable to create a sector dedicated to their recycling.
The full story is at: https://www.thelocal.fr/20180425/france-looks-to-tobacco-companies-for-help-in-cigarette-butt-clean-up-blitz.CORESTA calls for papers
The organizers of the 2018 CORESTA Congress yesterday called for papers.
The Congress, whose theme is Science and Innovation: Addressing the needs, will be hosted by the China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC).
It is due to be held on 22-26 October at the Intercontinental Hotel, Kunming, China.
In a joint announcement, the CNTC Congress Organizing Committee and the CORESTA Secretariat said that the call for papers was now online.
The organizers said the call for papers was currently accessible through the CORESTA website at www.coresta.org and would be made available later through the official Congress website.
Direct access to the abstract submission system was available through the CORESTA website at: CORESTA 2018 abstract submission
The announcement said authors would receive immediate receipt messages by email to confirm the successful submission of their abstracts and would be informed of the CORESTA Reading Committee’s selection towards the end of June 2018.
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is May 16.Plainly not working
Five years after Australia introduced standardized packaging on all tobacco products, data show that the policy has had no impact on reducing smoking across the country, according to a press note issued by Imperial Tobacco Canada through PRNewswire.
While the Australian government had admitted earlier this year that smoking rates had not declined since the introduction of standardized packaging – the first time the rates had not decreased in more than two decades – neither its Department of Health nor Canada’s normally-vocal anti-tobacco lobby had made any statements in response to the five-year milestone, the note said.
“We are not surprised that the data clearly indicates that implementing plain packaging has not worked in Australia,” Eric Gagnon, head of external and corporate affairs for Imperial Tobacco, was quoted as saying. “It’s time Canada recognized that efforts to legislate plain packaging will result in similar numbers.”
France, Imperial Tobacco said, had discovered the same. Tobacco sales had not decreased in the year since the country had introduced standardized packaging, and last week the country’s health minister, Agnès Buzyn, had stated in the legislature that “plain packaging has therefore not reduced official tobacco sales”.
“The answer to reducing the number of smokers is not, and has never been, plain packaging,” said Gagnon. “Plain packaging however does impact the sale of contraband tobacco products. Australia’s introduction of the legislation corresponded with a significant increase in the market share of illegal tobacco in the country, rising over 25 percent in the first two years [according to the KPMG report, Illicit tobacco in Australia 2016, https://home.kpmg.com/uk/en/home/insights/2017/04/illicit-tobacco-in-australia-2016.html].
“Plain packaging forces legal companies to abandon their symbols of legitimacy and makes it easier to counterfeit tobacco products. Canada must take a step back and look at the data. It’s the reasonable thing to do.”
Imperial said that as Canada’s Bill S-5, which mandates standardized packaging, moved to its second reading in the House of Commons, it wanted to remind legislators of the inefficiency of such packaging in other countries.
The company said that it supported the objective set forth by Health Canada to reduce the smoking rate to five percent by 2035, but believed the best way of achieving that goal was by offering consumers less-harmful alternatives.
“There is sound evidence telling us that vaping products are less-risky than traditional cigarettes, but they are currently illegal” said Gagnon. “Our government needs to embrace the harm-reduction model supported by other governments and public health experts, and provide Canadians with access to legal regulated vaping products as soon as possible.”
Tobacco shown the door
BNP Paribas has said that it will cease transactions and investments related to the tobacco sector and progressively disengage from relationships with tobacco clients, according to a Bloomberg News story relayed by the TMA.
The France-based banking and financial services group’s clients are said to include British American Tobacco, Imperial Brands and Philip Morris International.
Laurence Pessez, global head of corporate social responsibility at BNP Paribas, said the decision to disengage from the tobacco sector was effective from now, though withdrawal would be progressive to the extent that the bank would honor its commitments to its clients.
BNP said in a statement that its new position applied to firms that earned their revenue mainly from tobacco, including manufacturers, wholesalers and traders.
The move was reportedly prompted by a recent decision by the UN Global Compact to exclude tobacco firms from its initiative for a responsible economy.
Pessez said BNP Paribas had “a certain number of sector-specific policies that govern our interventions in industries considered sensitive, such as defense, nuclear energy, palm oil and agriculture”.
No to shisha research
On the evidence of a survey launched in May, the board of CORESTA (Co-operation Centre for Scientific Research Relative to Tobacco) has decided not to include activities specific to water pipes in its work program.
The survey was conducted to evaluate interest in water pipe research since very little scientific work had been done on either water-pipe tobacco mixtures or emissions.
‘Work had started with ISO/TC 126 on a preliminary level in 2010 but was stopped in 2016 after four documents were drafted for proposed further projects,’ a CORESTA press note said.
‘The survey was announced in the CORESTA Newsletter (#47), on the website and via an e-mail to all CORESTA contacts.
‘It gathered 18 marks of interest, including four from non-CORESTA members. Sixteen had water pipe related activities, supplying material, equipment or services. Fourteen showed interest in future work but only nine declared having expertise in analytical methods, and 15 showed interest in participating in a workshop.
‘Considering the relatively low level of interest and the fact that work was simultaneously reactivated within ISO with four work item proposals for one ISO Standard and three Technical Specifications, the CORESTA Board eventually decided not to add water pipe specific activity within CORESTA’s work program.’
The following new ISO projects on water pipes were approved by ISO members at the end of May:
- ‘NP 22486 – Standard on definitions and standard conditions;
- ‘NP 22487 – Technical Specification on TPM and NFDPM;
- ‘NP 22492 – Technical Specification on CO in vapor phase;
- ‘NP 22991 – Technical Specification on CO in charcoal.’
