Vapour
Our vapour products are already playing a major role in providing smokers with an alternative to cigarettes. We continue to make investments to ensure we can satisfy this growing interest, developing new innovations and pushing the technological boundaries to deliver for our consumers.
What are vapour products?
Vapour products are battery-powered devices that heat e-liquid to produce an inhalable aerosol, commonly known as vapour. Although e-liquid usually contains nicotine originally derived from tobacco, there is no tobacco in vapour products.
The atomiser – the part that produces the vapour – typically consists of a tiny electric heater combined with a wick made from absorbent materials such as glass fibre, cotton or ceramic.
E-liquid is drawn into the wick from a reservoir or tank and is then heated to form a vapour when the consumer puffs on the product.
Open and closed systems
Vapour products can be classified into either open or closed systems. Open systems offer a customised vaping experience – using a refillable tank, consumers are free to use a wide range of e-liquids. Many open systems also allow consumers to mix and match different atomisers, batteries, and power settings.
Closed systems work with disposable cartridges pre-filled with e-liquid. These offer greater convenience for the consumer, and since the consumable and hardware are designed to work specifically together, the resulting optimised system can maximise performance and experience for the consumer. Our market-leading products within this format include the Vuse ePod and Vuse ePen3 – which are convenient, easy to use, and able to deliver high levels of quality and safety by ensuring the e-liquid is optimised and fully tested with the intended device.
Let's take a closer look at ePod
Use 360-technology to explore how our flagship vapour product, ePod, works.
The scientific evidence
Organisations, such as Public Health England (PHE), are clear that vaping is likely to be much less risky than smoking traditional cigarettes when used as a complete substitute for continued cigarette smoking. According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), vaping now stands at 6.3% of the population, and smoking levels have dropped to 14.7%, from 23% in 2012, which means that the UK has one of the lowest smoking incidences in Europe.
We have published world’s most comprehensive set of published scientific results on a single vapour product — the Vype ePen — and our scientists continue to build reliable evidence to support our vapour portfolio.
In 2023, one of the largest ever vapour product studies, which analysed BAT’s flagship vapour brand Vuse, have been published in the journal of Internal and Emergency Medicine .
The study compared clinical measurements from exclusive Vuse consumers with smokers. The results of the study show that participating Vuse consumers had favourable differences in biomarkers of exposure (BoE) and biomarkers of potential harm (BoPH) relevant to smoking-related diseases when compared to smokers.
Vuse users have shown significantly lower biomarkers of exposure for priority cigarette smoke toxicants as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO)iii. The data also showed favourable differences between Vuse consumers and smokers across all biomarkers of potential harm measured, with three being statistically significant.
Product Safety
With consumer safety and satisfaction at the forefront of everything we do, product stewardship is paramount at BAT. Our multidisciplinary teams of scientists ensure our products meet high quality standards, whether that’s the battery, device materials, e-liquid ingredients or vapour contents. We use a peer-reviewed risk assessment framework to analyse how existing adult consumers use vapour products, what is in the vapour, how the vapour impacts human cells in the lab, how the vapour affects the body in clinical studies, and what impact the products could have on the vaping adult population.
Regulation
Regulation of vapour products is still developing, and can vary according to jurisdiction. More comprehensive, evidence-based oversight of this rapidly evolving sector is needed. BAT’s scientists are generating good quality science to inform and enrich the dialogue.
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