Reversed Phase Ion-Pair Liquid Chromatographic Determination of Nicotine in Commercial Tobacco Products. 2. Cigarettes

A reversed phase ion-pair liquid chromatographic method for the determination of nicotine in commercial tobacco products was previously developed and optimized (Ciolino, L. A.; Turner, J. A.; McCauley, H. A.; Smallwood, A. W.; Yi, T. Y. J. Chromatogr. 1999a, 852 (2), 451−463) and provided reliable results for the determination of nicotine in commercial moist snuff (Ciolino, L. A.; McCauley, H. A.; Fraser, D. B.; Barnett, D. Y.; Yi, T. Y.; Turner, J. A. J. Agric. Food Chem. 1999b, 47, 3706−3712). The method uses an aqueous-based sample extraction and provides rapid separation of nicotine from the minor tobacco alkaloids and other commercial tobacco components. In the present work, the method is evaluated for the determination of nicotine in commercial cigarettes and compared to both an official AOAC method for total alkaloids in tobacco (AOAC, AOAC Official Methods of Analysis of AOAC International, 16th ed.; AOAC International: Gaithersburg, MD, 1995; pp 30−31), and a published GC method (Lyerly, L. A.; Greene, G. H. Beitr. Tabakforsch. 1976, 8 (6), 359−361). Good agreement was obtained between the ion-pair LC method and the GC method with relative differences in determined nicotine contents of 0.6 to 5% for a series of commercial and reference cigarettes. Keywords: Nicotine; cigarettes; tobacco; alkaloids; reversed phase ion-pair liquid chromatography