Quantitation of formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and acetone in sidestream cigarette smoke by high-performance liquid chromatography.

A method is described for the collection and quantitation of formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and acetone in sidestream cigarette smoke. Using the "fishtail" chimney procedure (1), sidestream smoke is drawn by vacuum through the chimney, a Cambridge filter pad (Performance Systematics Inc.; Caledonia, MI), and into an impinger containing a solution of 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine (DNPH), whose solubility in acetonitrile was increased by using diglyme as a constituent of the collection derivatization solution. The chimney is rinsed with DNPH solution to remove "formaldehyde", and the rinse is added to the impinger solution. This combined wash and impinger solution is used to extract the Cambridge pad. An aliquot of the extract is analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography using a reversed-phase column, ultraviolet detection, and a mobile phase gradient with tetrahydrofuran as a modifier. Acrolein is detected but gives poor precision and recovery because of dimer formation. For formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and acetone, both the precision (7.30, 2.49, 2.88% relative standard deviation, respectively) and recovery (90.0, 95.2, 102.8%, respectively) are acceptable. The response for formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and acetone is linear and a function of the number of cigarettes smoked. The minimum detectable quantity for the analytes ranges from 5 to 16 micrograms per cigarette.