In Reply There is general agreement on the need for rigorous independent studies of IQOS that will accurately inform the public. When we began our research,¹ Phillip Morris International (PMI) advertisements claimed IQOS produced “no smoke.” We thus designed our exploratory study to detect chemicals typical of pyrolysis, the presence of which defines an aerosol as “smoke.” We chose a comparison cigarette (a brand regularly smoked by millions) based on convenience, because the comparison was incidental, rather than the heart of the experiment. We did not set out to provide a benchmark for the regulatory industry, so comparison with a 3R4F standard cigarette was unnecessary. Tobacco content naturally varies, and differences may be compounded by process fluctuations in cigarette manufacture.² Standard cigarettes reduce such variations, but they are no more representative of cigarettes used by smokers worldwide than any other single brand of cigarette. Because we were not benchmarking, using the more expensive standard cigarette and waiting for its delivery would have held up our real work, which was identifying the presence of harmful chemicals in IQOS smoke. Our validated and standardized analytical methods are not likely to have caused the wide standard deviation in our measures of IQOS smoke: variation in IQOS tobacco content is the likely explanation.

在答复中， 人们普遍同意需要对IQOS进行严格的独立研究，以准确地向公众通报。当我们开始研究时，¹ Phillip Morris International（PMI）的广告声称IQOS产生“无烟”。因此，我们设计了探索性研究，以检测典型的热解化学物质，该化学物质的存在将气溶胶定义为“烟雾”。我们基于方便性选择了比较香烟（一个经常有数百万人吸烟的品牌），因为比较是偶然的，而不是实验的重点。我们没有为监管行业提供基准，因此没有必要与3R4F标准卷烟进行比较。烟草含量自然会发生变化，卷烟制造过程中的工艺波动可能会加剧差异。²标准卷烟减少了这种差异，但是与其他任何单一品牌的卷烟相比，它们在全球吸烟者中所代表的卷烟没有更多的代表。因为我们没有进行基准测试，所以使用更昂贵的标准卷烟并等待其交付将阻碍我们的实际工作，即确定IQOS烟中是否存在有害化学物质。我们经过验证的标准化分析方法不太可能在我们的IQOS烟度测量中引起较大的标准差：IQOS烟草含量的变化可能是造成这种情况的原因。