( The US Senate is considering a bill tha...)US FDA may Be Asked to Monitor Toxic Levels of Cigarettes,Health

The US Senate is considering a bill that would enable the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) to regulate the levels of tar , nicotine and other harmful components of tobacco products. Cigarette smoke alone contains some 4,000 chemicals, more than 40 of which are known to cause cancer.

Commending the bill, Dr. David Burns, scientific editor of several surgeon general reports on tobacco, said it could help minimize the toxicity of cigarettes.

New products would need FDA approval before they could be sold, according to the legislation. The bill also would authorize the FDA to set national standards for tobacco products to control how they are made, as well as force the disclosure of their ingredients, including compounds and additives, and in what quantities. That, supporters claim, should help expose and ultimately limit the ways cigarettes are engineered to the detriment of the public's health.

But some have a different take. "It would still be a deadly product. They are not going to make it a safe product by taking out particular smoke constituents. The problem is the public is going to perceive the product is safe because the FDA has assumed jurisdiction," points out Dr. Michael Siegel, a Boston University School of Public Health professor.

But at the very least the bill would keep tobacco companies from tinkering with their products in ways that would make them any more dangerous, supporters counter.

"The tobacco industry would not be allowed to manipulate the ingredients like increase nicotine or decrease nicotine or whatever they do without disclosing it," said M. Cass Wheeler, chief executive officer of the American Heart Association. "The bill would put the burden of proof on industry to demonstrate to the FDA that what they're doing would not be more harmful," Wheeler said.

When asked for some likely targets that regulators could tackle, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chemist Dav
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