Analysis of Menthol, Menthol-Like, and Other Tobacco Flavoring Compounds in Cigarettes and in Electrically Heated Tobacco Products

Although smoking is responsible for a huge variety of diseases which result in ~16% of the fatalities in the United States and Europe respectively, cigarettes are still being sold far and wide. Mentholated cigarettes were introduced in 1920, since then to today social recognition and the use of flavored tobacco products is still increasing especially within young people. The EU adopted as its measure to reduce tobacco use among adolescents the prohibition of tobacco products with a characteristic flavor by means of the directive 2014/40/EU of the European Parliament and the Council.

For this reason, we developed a method for the simultaneous determination of 14 tobacco flavors like menthol, menthol-like and other compounds via gas-chromatography coupled with mass-spectrometry (GC/MS) and analyzed 21 different tobacco products (mentholated and non-mentholated cigarettes, as well as electrically heated tobacco products (EHTPs)) of the German market regarding their flavoring compound patterns. The highest amounts of flavoring compounds were determined in menthol cigarettes (~10,000 μg/stick) whereas non-mentholated cigarettes and EHTPs featured only ~10 μg/stick. In total, seven flavoring compounds like menthol, L-menthone, L-linalool, isopulegol, geraniol, camphor and WS-3 (cooling agent) were available within the samples. Mentholated cigarettes could be clearly identified since > 99% of the measured flavoring compounds was represented by menthol. Although flavoring compounds in non-mentholated cigarettes and EHTPs were quite comparable, they could be differentiated due to different flavoring compound patterns. Brandspecific flavoring compound patterns were not recognized.