04《经济学家》读译参考：一个关乎标准的问题-烟草公司日子不好过

A question of standards

一个关乎标准的问题

Feb 9th 2006

From The Economist Global Agenda

More suggestions of bad behaviour by tobacco companies. Maybe

也许，烟草公司对那些不良行为应多提点建议

ANOTHER round has just been fought in the battle between tobacco companies and those who regard them as spawn of the devil. In a paper just published in the Lancet, with the provocative title “Secret science: tobacco industry research on smoking behaviour and cigarette toxicity”, David Hammond, of *Waterloo University[1] in Canada and Neil Collishaw and Cynthia Callard, two members of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, a lobby group, criticise the behaviour of British American Tobacco (BA T). They say the firm considered manipulating some of its products in order to （1）make them low-tar in the eyes of officialdom while they actually delivered high tar and nicotine levels to smokers.

烟草公司与那些视其为“魔鬼之子”的人之间刚刚又进行了新一轮的交锋。新近出版的《柳叶刀》刊登了一篇题目颇具煽动性的论文《秘密科研——烟草业开展对吸烟行为和香烟毒性的研究》，作者是加拿大沃特鲁大学的戴维•哈蒙德以及加拿大一个名为“无烟加拿大医师”游说团的两名成员尼尔•科里肖和辛西娅•加拉德。他们对英美烟草公司的行为提出了批评，称该公司拟对某些烟草产品进行处理，企图让监督部门误以为其焦油含量低，而实际上这些产品仍会使得烟民吸收高浓度的焦油和尼古丁。

It was and is no secret, as BAT points out, that people smoke low-tar cigarettes differently from high-tar ones. The reason is that they want a decent dose of the nicotine which tobacco smoke contains. They therefore *pull[2] a larger volume of air through the cigarette when they *draw on[3] a low-tar rather than a high-tar variety. （2）The extra volume makes up for the lower concentration of the drug.

正如英美烟草公司所指出，人们吸低焦油含量香烟的感觉不同于高焦油含量香烟，这在过去和现在都不是什么秘密。这是因为他们需要烟草中含有适量尼古丁，抽低焦油品种的香烟时所吸入的空气含量也因此比抽高焦油品种的香烟时高，（译者注：也就是说，尼古丁含量过高，烟就很难吸，不容易抽得动。）而这高出来的空气含量也弥补了瘾性物质（尼古丁）的不足。

But a burning cigarette is a complex thing, and that extra volume has some unexpected consequences. In particular, a bigger draw is generally a faster draw. （3）That pulls a higher proportion of the air inhaled through the burning tobacco, rather than through the paper sides of the cigarette. This, in turn, means more smoke per unit volume, and thus more tar and nicotine. The nature of the nicotine may change, too, with more of it being in a form that is easy for the body to absorb.

不过，一支点燃的卷烟可是一个复杂的玩意儿，并且空气量增加也会带来意想不到的结果，特别是当我们大口吸烟时往往会很快抽完一支烟，此时所吸入的空气更多来自于燃烧的烟草而非卷烟纸侧。因而，这就意味着每多吸一口空气，就会多吸一口焦油和尼古丁。多数尼古丁都以一种易被人体吸收的形式存在，因此尼古丁的性质也可能发生改变。

According to Dr Hammond and his colleagues, a series of studies conducted by BA T's researchers between 1972 and 1994 quantified much of this. The standardised way of analysing cigarette smoke, as *laid down[4] by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), which regulates everything from computer code to greenhouse gases, uses a machine to make 35-millilitre puffs, drawn for two seconds once a minute. The firm's