ABSTRACT
Several studies on tobacco and tobacco smoke composition, including studies of the long-chained aliphatic ester fraction, ultimately led to an interesting extrapolation by Green and Rodgman [see endnote 39 in (1373)] on the number of smoke components. Because of the limitations of analytical technology at the time of the Rodgman et al. study (3294) on the long-chained aliphatic ester fraction from tobacco and smoke, the higher molecular weight esters could neither be determined nor characterized. However, it was noted that qualitatively the tobacco ester fraction and the smoke ester fraction were similar. Every ester identified by Rodgman et al. in the smoke ester fraction was found in the tobacco ester fraction. Minor quantitative differences between the levels of individual esters in the two fractions were observed. With much improved analytical technology in the late 1980s, Arrendale et al. (103), in their study on the long-chained aliphatic ester fraction in tobacco, were able to identify not only many of the esters identified earlier in tobacco and smoke by Rodgman et al. but also many more higher molecular weight esters. Logic would dictate that if every ester identified in the Rodgman et al. study was present in both tobacco and smoke then every ester identified by Arrendale et al. (103) in tobacco would also be in smoke. Inclusion of the esters newly identified by Arrendale et al. in the smoke list results in a substantial increase in the number of smoke components.
