A Pilot Study to Assess Solanesol Levels in Exhaled Cigarette Smoke

This paper describes the results obtained during the measurement of the level of solanesol in exhaled cigarette smoke from human subjects. The study was performed with three different cigarettes with U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ‘tar’ values of 5.0 mg, 10.6 mg, and 16.2 mg. The number of human subjects was ten smokers for each of the evaluated products, each subject smoking three cigarettes within one hour. The exhaled smoke was collected using a vacuum assisted procedure that avoids strain in exhaling, and the solanesol was analyzed using an original high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) technique. The cigarette butts from the smokers were collected and also analyzed for solanesol. The results obtained for the cigarette butts from the smokers were used to calculate the level of solanesol delivered to the smoker, based on calibration curves. These curves were generated separately by analyzing the solanesol in smoke and in the cigarette butts obtained by machine smoking under different puffing regimes. Knowing the levels of solanesol delivered to the smoker and the exhaled levels it was possible to calculate the retention and retention % of this compound from mainstream smoke for different cigarettes types. The amount of retained solanesol is the lowest for the 5.0 mg ‘tar’ product, and the highest for the 16.2 mg ‘tar’ product, although there is not much difference between the 10.6 mg ‘tar’ product and the 16.2 mg ‘tar’ product. For the 10.6 mg ‘tar’ cigarettes the retention % was between 60% and 72%, for the 5.0 mg product the retention % was slightly lower ranging between 53% and 70%, while for the 16.2 mg ‘tar’ product, the retention % was slightly higher ranging between 62% and 82%.

A statistical analysis of the retention % data using ANOVA single factor analysis showed that the 10.6 mg ‘tar’ cigarette is not different from the 16.2 mg ‘tar’ product while the retention % for the 5.0 mg ‘tar’ cigarette was statistically different from the other two products. The values for the retention % of solanesol by human smokers as found in this study were in very good agreement with the few reported results in the literature.