Background: The article presents a review of the literature on the chemical composition of smoke generated from a standard cigarette and the aerosol generated after heating tobacco and chemical compounds formed in the aerosol of electronic cigarettes.
Methods: The literature review was carried out on the PubMed online bibliographic database, Google search engine, Google Scholar based on science articles published in recent 20 years.
Results: The bibliographic analysis shows that: replacing smoking in the traditional way by heating tobacco modifies significantly the content of chemical substances found in aerosol, the substances found in aerosols generated by e-cigarettes have proven toxic effects, e.g. pro-inflammatory effect on lung epithelial cells (e.g. crotonaldehyde) or a mutagenic effect (e.g. NNK), using e-cigarette aerosol does not rule out a health risk for people, which is not fully recognized at present.
Conclusions: Replacing smoking in the traditional way by heating tobacco modifies significantly the content of chemical substances found in aerosol. Using e-cigarette aerosol does not rule out a health risk for people, because the substances found in aerosols generated by e-cigarettes have proven toxic effects.
Keywords: Tobacco; chemical content; e-cigarette; heating; reference cigarette.