The composition of cigarette filters is one of the factors we can manipulate to control smoke yield. In this work we compared the TPM, nicotine, carbon monoxide and 13 PHAs (including benzo[a]pyrene) emissions of cigarettes from three different blends of tobacco with three different type of filters each: plain cellulose acetate filter (AC), combined cellulose acetate/activated carbon filter (CA) and a filter composed of cellulose acetate and paper treated with porphyrin (PO). An American blend cigarette, an English type cigarette and a dark tobacco cigarette with; AC filter, CA filter and PO filter were tested under Canadian intensive machine smoking conditions by triplicate. PHAs were analyzed by GC/MS/MS. They were extracted from the Cambridge filters of the smoking machine with 20 ml of hexane:dicloromethane (85:15), shook and ultrasonicated 1h, injected directly in the GC/MS/MS (IonTrap Varian-Saturn 2100) and quantified with GC-EI-MS/MS.PO filters lowered the TPM yield in all types of cigarettes (20% - 40%) without reducing the levels of nicotine, carbon monoxide or PHAs content, including the benzo[a]pyrene. CA filter did not reduce the content of any of the parameters determined.The ineffectiveness of the CA filter and the PO filter in the cigarettes tested may be due to saturation of the active particles with the intensive smoking regimen. PO filter manufacturers claim that these kinds of filters remove a significant portion of mutagens and carcinogens from cigarette smoke, but we found no reduction in the levels of PHAs using the Canadian intensive smoking method.