Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease in the United States. Exposure to tobacco smoke leads to cancer, heart and lung disease, and addiction. The origin of the tobacco and cigarette manufacturing practices of counterfeit cigarettes are unknown. Because toxic metals are incorporated into the tobacco lamina during cultivation, the ambient metal content of the soil could produce...

Counterfeit electronics are a long-standing problem, which pose an enormous threat to the electronics industry and supply chain. Critical systems used in medical, transportation, defense, etc. have long life cycles which make it easier for long-term counterfeiting success. Physical inspection and electrical tests are the most common approach for counterfeit parts detection. During the physical ...

The production and distribution of counterfeit drugs is an urgent increasingly critical worldwide issue, especially in pandemics. imperfect supply chain system the pharmaceutical industry one reasons for drug counterfeiting. Drugs ownership changes from manufacturers to wholesaler, distributor, then pharmacist before it reaches customer thus making difficult keep track it. In this paper, we hav...

Focusing on 8 drug types on the WHO-approved medicine list, we constructed an original dataset of 899 drug samples from 17 low- and median-income countries and tested them for visual appearance, disintegration, and analyzed their ingredients by chromatography and spectrometry. Fifteen percent of the samples fail at least one test and can be considered substandard. After controlling for local fa...

A method for the determination of Pb isotope ratios (IR) in cigarette tobacco by quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (Q-ICP-MS) has been developed and applied to tobacco samples from genuine and counterfeit cigarettes obtained in the USA. The IR ²⁰⁷Pb/²⁰⁶Pb, (208)Pb/²⁰⁶Pb, ²⁰⁶Pb/²⁰⁴Pb, ²⁰⁷Pb/²⁰⁴Pb and ²⁰⁸Pb/²⁰⁴Pb were measured using a Q-ICP-MS instrument. Two certified refer...

Although people buy counterfeit products to signal positive traits, we show that wearing counterfeit products makes individuals feel less authentic and increases their likelihood of both behaving dishonestly and judging others as unethical. In four experiments, participants wore purportedly fake or authentically branded sunglasses. Those wearing fake sunglasses cheated more across multiple task...

The counterfeiting of electronic components has become a major challenge in the 21st century. The electronic component supply chain has been greatly affected by widespread counterfeit incidents. A specialized service of testing, detection, and avoidance must be created to tackle the worldwide outbreak of counterfeit integrated circuits (ICs). So far, there are standards and programs in place fo...