Determination of Mercury in Mainstream Cigarette Smoke by Conventional and Amalgamation Cold Vapor Atomic Absorption Spectrometry

A method for differentiation of gas- and particulate-phase mercury in mainstream cigarette smoke was developed using electrostatic precipitation (EP) as the trap for the particulate phase and impingers containing acidic potassium permanganate solution as the trap for the gas-phase portion. The mercury collected from the gas phase was analyzed by conventional cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometry (CVAAS) and the particulate phase was analyzed by gold amalgamation CVAAS. Cigarettes were smoked under two smoking regimes, FTC (35-mL puff volume, 2 s puff duration and one puff every 60 s) and an alternative (45-mL puff volume, 2 s puff duration, one puff every 30 s and 50% of any ventilation holes blocked) currently recommended by the Massachusetts Department of Health. For the 1R4F reference cigarette smoked under the FTC smoking regime, the mercury found in the particulate phase was less than 0.2 ng/cig, compared with 4.9 ng/cig in the gas phase. By changing smoking parameters, the mercury concentration in mainstream smoke was found to change proportional to the delivery of cigarette smoke condensate (CSC) for the same type of cigarette. However, the mercury level for different types of cigarettes smoked under the same smoking parameters had no linear relationship with CSC delivery. Spiked recovery was 98% AA± 8% for gas-phase mercury and 97% AA± 2% for the particulate phase. These results indicate that the analytical method developed is suitable for the determination of mercury in mainstream smoke. For routine analytical work in a smoking laboratory, only the gas phase needs to be analyzed for determination of mercury in mainstream smoke because the amount of mercury in the particulate phase is negligible.