Trends in Analytical Methods for Analysis of Tobacco Products: An Overview

Abstract

Abstract. Currently, due to the strong trends in policies to reduce smoking, several concerns related to quality control and regulation of tobacco products have been raised, as a great variety of products are available to consumers in the market. Considering that development of robust and selective analytical methods for tobacco and derivative products has been an important and necessary task over the years, however laborious, due to the complexity of the matrices. This work presents an overview of advances, innovation, and trends in analytical methods, focused on the chromatographic analysis of nicotine, tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs), humectants, pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and sugars in different tobacco products. Gas chromatography (GC) coupled with different detectors is widely used to analyze nicotine, humectants and TSNAs in tobacco leaves and derivative products, while liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) has been frequently used to analyze TSNAs in mainstream cigarette smoke and smokeless tobacco products. Pesticides were mainly analyzed in tobacco using GC or LC coupled with mass detector (MS), while PAHs and sugars were generally analyzed in tobacco and smoke using LC-MS and GC-MS techniques, respectively. In addition to already established methods and despite the lack of a worldwide standardization of methods, significant efforts have been made to develop analytical procedures for a wide variety of tobacco products, with a broad range of innovative chromatographic methods available. In this sense, a potential trend is the possibility of simultaneous determination of multiple components aiming to reduce the analysis time. The present study examined the main works that developed or improved analytical methods for identifying and quantifying priority compounds in different tobacco matrices and aims to contribute to future research with this objective, in addition, to promoting standardization of technical terms used in this analytical area. It is noteworthy that some of the methods mentioned here have not been validated and further studies are needed in order to obtain reproducible analytical methods for regulatory purposes.
 Keywords: chromatography analyses; tobacco leaves; cigarette; cigarette smoke; smokeless tobacco products.