Report On Southampton Research, 1967

The documents include a detailed report on research activities at BAT's Southampton facility as of July 1967, two years after Dr. Griffith's visit to England {1109.01}. Dr. Robert R. Johnson from R&D at B&W had spent two weeks in residence at BAT's Southampton facility, and the file note summarizes his findings.

Current studies on the design of "safe" cigarettes fall into several main approaches. These are (1) synthetic tobacco substitutes, (2) cigarettes incorporating a large percentage of air-cured tobacco, (3) smoking products delivering smoke with a high nicotine/tar ratio, and (4) selective filtration. Ancillary research is also proceeding in areas of biological testing, human smoking patterns and smoke absorption, and smoke analysis. The supposed paramount importance of nicotine is evident in almost all of this research. {1109.01, p. 1}

Five years after the phenol crisis, selective filtration work had become a major function of the Southampton laboratory. The lab was also exploring a variety of additives and modifications to tobacco, including changes in the tobacco blend to reduce toxicity. Nicotine pharmacology was under study, and methods were being developed to look for nitrosamines, the most potent carcinogens in tobacco and tobacco smoke. Some work continued on Ariel (discussed in chapter 3), but in the main the emphasis of this wide-ranging but integrated research effort seems to have been on finding ways to make conventional cigarettes safer.

Ed Finch, CEO of B&W, read Dr. Johnson's report carefully enough to raise a question about it with Dr. Griffith {1110.01}. Why did "tu-

morigenicity" increase even though the 3,4-benzpyrene content of smoke had been reduced after treatment with potassium carbonate {1109.01, p.2}? In his memo to Finch, Dr. Griffith explains that benzpyrene is by no means the only, or even the most, carcinogenic compound in cigarette smoke.

Actually, the data from the initial Harrogate experiment would indicate that the benzpyrene fraction can account for, at most, one third of the [carcinogenic] activity of the total condensate.

I personally feel that far too much attention has been given to 3,4-benzpyrene and other polycyclic hydrocarbons in England and elsewhere and not enough attention has been given to other materials which are probably of greater importance. {1110.01}

The more industry scientists learned about the toxicity of cigarettes, the more complex the problem seemed to become.