A high-performance liquid chromatographic determination of major phenolic compounds in tobacco smoke.

A high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method is developed that simultaneously quantifies the dihydroxy compounds hydroquinone, resorcinol, and catechol and the monohydroxy compounds phenol, m + p-cresol and o-cresol in cigarette smoke. Particulate matter samples collected on Cambridge pads and in impingers by conventional trapping techniques are simply (no derivatization required) subjected to reversed-phase gradient liquid chromatography. Samples of both mainstream and sidestream smoke can be analyzed. Selective fluorescence detection is used to monitor the mobile phase effluent, by which these phenolic compounds are detected in the nanogram range. The detector response is linear, overall precision is good, and recoveries are greater than 95 percent. The total run time, excluding extraction, is one hour. The procedure has been applied to tobacco products whose smoke contains varying amounts of these phenols. Kentucky Reference Cigarette 1R4F was found to contain substantially more of these compounds than a new cigarette that heats but does not burn tobacco (New Cigarette). The method is compared with other procedures used to determine phenolics in cigarette smoke.