Development of microwave-assisted headspace solid-phase microextraction followed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry for the analysis of phenol in a cigarette pad

Abstract

Phenol is a mainstream cigarette smoke constituent and has been classified as a main toxic component directly related to environmental and health issues. Analysis of phenol in mainstream cigarette smoke is of great importance. In this work, microwave-assisted headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) was developed for the fast analysis of phenol in a cigarette pad. Analyte in a Cambridge cigarette pad, activated by a short period of microwave irradiation, was headspace extracted by SPME and analyzed by GC-MS. Extraction conditions such as microwave irradiation time, SPME fiber coating, adsorption time and desorption time were investigated and optimized to achieve the best effect. The method was validated through the investigation of linearity, detection limit, recovery and precision. The linearity was in a wide range of 0.005–1 μg mL⁻¹ with a correlation coefficient R² = 0.999. The limit of detection was as low as 0.5 ng mL⁻¹, and acceptable recovery and RSD values of 86.5% and 11.5% were achieved. The proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of phenol in cigarette pad samples. The experimental results have demonstrated that microwave-assisted HS-SPME followed by GC-MS was a rapid, efficient and convenient method for the determination of phenol in tobacco products.