Preparing emission factors of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydro-carbons and nitrogen oxides for cigarette

Introduction: Thousandths dangerous chemicals are found in cigarette smoke. Each day millions cigarettes are consumed and its smoke is emitted in the atmosphere. Although several studies have been carried out on ciga-rette smoke, there is no reliable emission factor for pollutants emitted from burning cigarette. The aim of this study is to prepare four emission factors to estimate amount of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, total hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides per each cigarette.   Materials and methods: In this study a set of experiments was designed to achieve this aim. Different brands of cigarettes were prepared and then they was burned by a vacuum pump. Their cigarettes smoke was analyzed by a gas analyzer to find the concentration of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, total hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides in the cigarettes smoke. Next, the average emission factor for complete burning of a cigarette was calculated.   Results: High amount of pollutants could be found in cigarette smoke. The results revealed that 0.01 mg of hydrocarbons, 0.13 mg of carbon monoxide, 0.5 mg of carbon dioxide and 0.01 mg of nitrogen oxides are emitted during complete burning of each cigarette.   Conclusion: If the number of consumed cigarettes was available, these emis-sion factors can be used to understand the share of cigarette smoke in air pol-lution of large cities to understand whether cigarette consumption is effective on air pollution.