DETERMINATION OF ORGANIC-ACIDS IN CIGARETTE-SMOKE BY HIGH-PERFORMANCE LIQUID-CHROMATOGRAPHY AND CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS

The most abundant low-molecular-mass organic acids in cigarette smoke are glycolic, lactic, formic and acetic acids. In this study, these substances were detected and determined by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and by capillary electrophoresis (CE). HPLC analysis used precolumn derivatization with the p-bromophenacyl bromide. The two methods were compared. The levels of each organic acid in a typical ''European blend'' cigarette smoke measured by HPLC and CE were comparable. The corresponding run-to-run relative standard deviations (R.S.D.s) ranged from 6 to 12.7% for HPLC and from 2.8 to 12.4% for CE. The smoking-to-smoking reproducibility (R.S.D.) was between 4.2 and 11.0% for HPLC and between 1.2 and 14.0% for CE. The limit of detection, calculated at a signal-to-noise ratio of 3 for each acid, was about 10(-6) mol/l for the two methods, corresponding to 5 pmol of analyte injected for HPLC and 0.5 pmol for CE. CE was shown to be a good alternative to HPLC, requiring almost no sample preparation other than dilution, and giving a short analysis time (less than 15 min).