Nicotine Monitoring with a Wearable Sweat Band

Abstract

The tobacco epidemic is a public health threat that has taken a heavy toll of lives around the globe each year. Smoking affects both the smokers and those who are exposed to secondhand smoke, and careful tracking of exposure can be key to mitigating the potential hazards. For smokers, the variation of chemical compositions between commercial cigarettes has led to ambiguity in estimating the health risks, both for active smokers and others involuntarily exposed to tobacco smoke and byproducts. In this regard, sweat possesses an attractive opportunity to monitor smoke exposure due to sweat's abundance in biomolecules and its great accessibility. Here, we present a wearable sweat band to monitor nicotine, a prominent ingredient in cigarettes, as a viable way to quantitatively assess a wearer's exposure to smoking. Both smokers and normal subjects are tested to demonstrate the use of this device for smoke-related health monitoring. Our results exhibit confirmable and elevated nicotine levels in sweat for subjects inhaling cigarette smoke. This continuous and personalized sweat sensing device is leverage to monitor smoke pollution for a potentially broad population.

Emerging wearable flexible sensors for sweat analysis

“…Thus, the reduction or even elimination of any interference from unrelated signals establishes the basis for accurate sweat sensing. Temperature and humidity, which can affect enzyme structure and catalytic activities, are the most common interfering effects in electrochemical sweat sensors [86]. Many sweat sensors have integrated temperature sensors to compensate for this temperature effect [33,87].…”

Wearable Biosensors for Body Computing

“…For foreign compounds absorbed or ingested into the body, such as nicotine by smoking and caffeine by drinking coffee, sweat is often a primary route of excretion and the mere presence of those molecules in sweat can be informative. [ 103,104 ] For example, many recreational and performance enhancing drugs emerge in sweat and can be used for doping control, and toxic heavy metals in sweat indicate dangerous environmental exposure. [ 105 ] Alcohol is a rare xenobiotic that has been shown to more closely correlate between sweat and blood.…”

Biconcave Bi2WO6 Nanoparticles for UV Light-Activated Detection of Nicotine in Human Sweat and Cigarette Samples

“…Further, the experiments require an electrolytic channel for transport of charge carriers and redox species, which is time-consuming and complex. The response times for these sensors were found to be very high, whereas the photo-activated sensor displayed the quickest response time of 0.2 s. The previously reported wearable sweat band uses the enzyme-based nicotine sensing technique, which has several issues like fouling of the transducer’s surface due to prolonged use, temperature and pH dependences, interference from chemicals present in the sample matrix, and dissolved molecular oxygen concentration, which may limit its usage in biological systems. There are very few reports that prove the nicotine degradation/detection mechanism through the reaction of nanoparticles with reactive oxide species.…”