//Exploring the SAF: Product Safety Evaluation

In the final instalment of this new series, we speak to Imperial scientists working in specific areas of our Scientific Assessment Framework, or SAF. Watch the video below or read on for a QA with Bethany Evans, Head of Product Safety & Compliance.

Please introduce yourself. What’s your name and your current role at Imperial Brands?

I’m Bethany Evans, Head of Product Safety & Compliance at Imperial Brands. I originally trained as a chemist and I’ve been with Imperial for 7 years.

My team is responsible for conducting the risk assessments of our next generation products (NGP), both pre- and post-launch, to ensure their compliance with the relevant technical and chemical product regulations.

What does being a responsible manufacturer mean to Imperial? 

From a product safety* perspective, it’s about ensuring the products we’re launching into markets are high quality for consumers to use – whether that relates to product design, the various controls in place during their manufacture and market realisation or the information we provide to consumers around usage.

It’s also about ensuring we’re product experts who understand our NGP inside and out, while holding ourselves to consistently high standards of professionalism.

Imperial takes its responsibilities as a manufacturer very seriously and we have a large team of highly qualified scientists to support these activities.

So our Scientific Assessment Framework (SAF) places significant emphasis on product safety assessment?

Absolutely. Our consumers are  a key focus of Imperial’s commitment to high standards of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG). We’re a consumer-led organisation committed to making a meaningful contribution to tobacco harm reduction, and a key part of this commitment involves generating relevant scientific data that helps support our NGP portfolio.

Clearly, consumers have a right to feel confident that when they choose one of our NGP it’s successfully negotiated a rigorous series of product tests.

Our product risk assessment process for NGP is holistic; we replicate international standards used in the medical device and pharmaceutical industries to identify, analyse, evaluate and react to potential safety risks prior to our NGP launching within markets.

In conjunction, we also have an effective post-market surveillance process that’s continually informing and updating our risk assessments. We consider risks spanning all aspects of our NGP – including their ingredients and emissions, device and battery electrical safety, the effectiveness of our manufacturing processes and their labelling and packaging.

When all these aspects are combined, we can feel confident we’re performing a comprehensive risk assessment of our NGP.

How does product risk assessment connect to the other stages of the SAF? 

Building a robust understanding of our products is what the SAF is all about. It’s necessary to not only fulfil our standards of care as a manufacturer when it comes to product risk, but also ensure our product risk assessments are as comprehensive as possible.

At every stage of the SAF we’re gathering scientific data to ensure we build a full picture of our products, while simultaneously feeding into our risk assessment.

Whether that’s through understanding the emissions profile of each NGP (product characterisation science), the impact of those emissions on a biological system (biological science), what happens when consumers are exposed to those emissions (clinical science), how consumers are using the product and its effectiveness at moving consumers away from smoking cigarettes (behavioural science), the long-term health outcomes within a population and once products on the market (computational science) and further learnings from consumer usage and peer-reviewed scientific literature (post-market surveillance and media monitoring), it’s clear the thread of examining and mitigating product risk runs very strongly through every element of our SAF.

What’s it like working within IMB Science? 

Working in our scientific and regulatory function means working on something different every day. Whether it’s building an understanding of our latest innovations, supporting our latest product launch or reviewing our latest scientific publications there’s always lots of interesting, engaging science going on within the team.

Personally, being able to work with my team to help enable new potentially harm reduced NGP reach markets – and adult smoker consumers who might be looking to switch away from combustible cigarettes – is incredibly motivating.

*Note to readers: Throughout this article we refer to product safety, or assessing product safety, which in this context relates to upholding our legal duties to consumers as a responsible manufacturer. Assessing the design and manufacture of our products, including materials and ingredients, to ensure they are appropriate, of a high quality and comply with any applicable legal standards allows us to verify that our products present no risks, or alternatively only the minimum safety or health risks to consumers which are compatible with their use, when used under normal or reasonably foreseeable conditions, as well as to provide consumers with appropriate warnings and instructions about safe use. This isn’t intended to imply that all our products are risk-free or defined as ‘safe’ when considered from a broader consumer health perspective.

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