Toxicologist Autumn Bernal explains why harm reduction keeps her in the fight: reducing disease burden for adult smokers through better product design, rigorous toxicology, and clear science communication. She highlights the core engineering challenge for ENDS: optimizing heating to minimize emissions while effectively delivering nicotine - without the harmful constituents found in cigarettes.
Transcription:
00:10 - 00:20
[Joanna Junak]
You are a toxicologist involved in health research on reduced risk nicotine products. So can you tell me why you decided to focus on harm reduction?
00:21 - 01:05
[Autumn Bernal]
Yeah, I'd be happy to. So when I was an initial scientist working in the laboratory, I really wanted to help communicate the science better. And I think the better question is more, why have I stayed in harm reduction? So as a consulting toxicologist, you end up in a lot of different areas. And why I continued to do projects in harm reduction is because of the impact on reducing the burden of disease for smokers. Really, that's the main goal. And also, the scientific questions can be really challenging, and there are so many unanswered questions, too, as far as how to best evaluate the products toxicologically, and so I find that really interesting.
01:06 - 01:14
[Joanna Junak]
And what are the biggest toxicology concerns today when analyzing electronic nicotine delivery systems products?
01:14 - 01:44
[Autumn Bernal]
I think the biggest challenge is to create and innovate a product that can have the best heating processes to reduce the emissions as much as possible and reduce those compared to cigarettes as much as possible for adult smokers. So I think That's the goal of many companies with really responsible product stewardship programs, is to innovate a device that can be really effective in delivering nicotine for adult smokers, but without the harmful constituents.
01:46 - 01:52
[Joanna Junak]
Which country or region do you think has the most science-based approach to regulating ENDS products?
01:53 - 02:10
[Autumn Bernal]
Well, I would have to say I think the US does have the most science-based approach. It can be the most rigorous, but they do try to base their regulations and guidelines in science, at least for the toxicology side of things.
02:11 - 02:19
[Joanna Junak]
And what message did you share with participants during your panel at this year's GFN conference?
02:19 - 02:40
[Autumn Bernal]
Yeah, so the primary message that I shared was that we can mitigate the risk from flavored products through responsible product development and also by using quantitative risk assessment processes to analyze the relative risk, the cancer risk, and the non-cancer risk for adult smokers who are switching from cigarettes to other flavored tobacco products.
02:40 - 02:44
[Joanna Junak]
Why is education so important in tobacco harm reduction?
02:45 - 03:14
[Autumn Bernal]
Yeah, I think misperceptions about tobacco harm reduction can limit its effectiveness in helping reduce the burden of lung disease and other smoking-related diseases. So I think the more people know about the evidence-based science behind tobacco harm reduction, the more willing they will be to choose less harmful products, and there'll be less deaths from tobacco-related disease and deaths worldwide.