Glo is a battery operated smokeless alternative to combustible cigarettes and works by heating sticks containing tobacco leaves. These refills which look like short cigarettes, must be inserted into the device and are heated up once it is switched on.
Glo is marketed as simpler and more practical to use than iQOS. Rather than consisting of a separate cigarette holder that is inserted into the charger after smoking each stick, Glo consists of just one device that can power more than twenty sticks with a full charge.
“It’s one touch, one button. It’s got a very easy-to-understand user interface. It’s easy to clean. Lastly, it’s very easy to carry,” explained Hamish Norrie, a marketing director at BAT, when the device was launched in Korea last year.
Studies indicate that HnB devices are safer than cigarettes
There have been different claims about the relative safety of HnB devices, however, a recent independent study on IQOS, concluded that HnB devices emit substantially lower levels of carbonyls than regular cigarettes.
In this study, renowned anti-smoking expert Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos, analyzed and compared carbonyl emissions from an HnB device, an e-cigarette and a regular cigarette. The products used in this research were PMI’s IQOS, the Nautilus Mini e-cigarette, a tank-type atomizer tested with a tobacco-flavoured liquid at 10 W and 14 W, and a Marlboro Red cigarette.
Farsalinos and his team found that when using 5g of e-cigarette liquid, in comparison to 20 cigarettes, a 92.2 to 99.8% reduced level of carbonyls is noted. Whilst when comparing 20 heets sticks with the same amount of cigarettes, an 81.7 to 97.9% reduced amount is measured.
