Detection of nicotine from secondhand smoke as a marker compound

Sanjay Walode

STES’s Sinhgad Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences,Lonavala,Pune 410401,India

Detection of nicotine from secondhand smoke as a marker compound

Sanjay Walode*

STES’s Sinhgad Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences,Lonavala,Pune 410401,India

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:

Available online 25 November 2015

Nicotine

Secondhand smoke

Environmental tobacco smoke(ETS)

Aboutmillionsofpeopledieyearlyduetotobaccouse.Anumber that has been estimated by World Health Organization will be double in next 15 years.Over the past decade signifcant progresshasbeenmadearoundtheworldincontrollinginvoluntary exposure of nonsmokers to the Secondhand smoke(SHS).In some country expanding workplace restriction now protect a majority of working adults,but the home remains the most important exposure setting for children.The BIDI is often called the poor man’s cigarette and is perhaps the cheapest tobacco smoking product in the world.Most often found in India,it is more harmful than cigarette and is one of the major sources for Secondhand smoke.Environmental Tobacco Smoke(ETS) includes thousands of substances.Of which more than 60 are known or suspected carcinogens and several strong irritants. The side stream smoke,emitted from the smoldering cigarette between puffs is different to that of main stream smoke, drawn though the mouth piece of the cigarette when puffs are taken.It is more serious if it happens inside and may leads to various types of cancers and effects on hearts.Target populationofthepresentstudywasinhabitantBIDIsmoker’shomes.

The main objective of this work was to develop household SHS monitoring device,to detect presence of passive nicotine smoke and to create public awareness about ETS so as to reduce SHS exposure in the home.Sensitive methods were carried out for analysis of nicotine,as very low level of nicotine in vapor phase and hence smoke can be detected even in small volume of air.Marker papers for the collection of nicotine were prepared by coating with 4%sodium bi-sulphate solution and dried in hot air oven at 80°C for 10 min.The device was prepared by trapping the paper in between two discs.The device was exposed for 10–15 days in the inhabitant BIDI smoking zone to absorb the vapor phase nicotine.Extraction of nicotine was carried out by vertexing for 10 min with 6 ml of water and 300 μl of ethanol.Free base of nicotine formed with NaOH treatment.Qualitative analysis of nicotine was carried out using chemical test(Dragendorff’s reagent)and instrumental methods like HPLC and HPTLC.Orange colored precipitation with Dragendorff’s reagent indicated the presence of nicotine which was confrmed by HPLC and HPTLC using pure nicotine as reference standard.Nicotine and other tobacco alkaloid that possesses basic pyrrolidine nitrogen readily form stable salts with both mineral and organic acid.Complete neutralization of nicotine free base with sulphuric acid produces nicotine sulphate salt with 2:1 molar ratio of nicotine to sulphate.Nicotine is stabilized during collection by reaction with bisulphate ions.Addition of sodium hydroxide leads to deprotonation of the nicotine.The extract was found to be very effcient when 45 μl of 10 N sodium hydroxide was added to the solution,but less led to ineffcient recovery of nicotine. Filters were spiked with varying amount of nicotine.Withoutthe addition of ethanol during the initial extraction,the extraction effciency was less,but was highly variable.The addition of ethanol helps to increase effciency.The nitrogen of pyrrolidine ring is protonated due to the tartaric acid present in Dragendorff’s reagent and the ion pairs to form insoluble precipitate.Analysis with this method is very fast without instrumentation.Confrmation of the nicotine also is carried out with instrumental technique,HPLC and HPTLC at low level. Mobile phase comprising of a mixture of KH2PO4:sodium 1-heptane sulfonate:water:methanol(0.2:0.3:8.2:1.8)was used for analyzing 100 μl aliquot by the HPLC.Solid phase extraction techniques were adopted for analysis of nicotine using HPTLC.An accurate and precise analytical method for determining nicotine in ETS has been developed.These methods are found to be low-cost,quick and valuable for analysis of moderate and signifcant levels of home ETS exposure.

R E F E R E N C E S

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[2]Bazylak G,Brózik H,Sabanty W.Combined SPE and HPTLC as a screening assay of urinary cotinine from male adolescents exposed to environmental tobacco smoke.Pol J Environ Stud 2000;9:113–123.

*E-mail address:Id-sanjuwalode@rediffmail.com.

Peer review under responsibility of Shenyang Pharmaceutical University.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajps.2015.11.118

1818-0876/?2016 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.on behalf of Shenyang Pharmaceutical University.This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).