Rapid Determination of Six Low Molecular Carbonyl Compounds in Tobacco Smoke by the APCI-MS/MS Coupled to Data Mining

Wuduo Zhao,Binbin Lu,Jianxun Zhang,Shihao Sun,Qidong Zhang,Shusheng Zhang

doi:10.1155/2017/8260860

Abstract

A simple method was established for the rapid determination of low molecular carbonyl compounds by the combination of atmospheric pressure chemical ionization tandem mass spectrometry (APCI-MS/MS) and data mining. The ionization was carried out in positive mode, and six low molecular carbonyl compounds of acrolein, acetone, propionaldehyde, crotonaldehyde, butanone, and butyraldehyde were analyzed by both full scan mode and daughter scan mode. To overcome the quantitative difficulties from isomer of acetone/propionaldehyde and butanone/butyraldehyde, the quantitation procedure was performed with the characteristic ion of [CH3O]+ under CID energy of 5 and 15 eV. Subsequently, the established method was successfully applied to analysis of six low molecular carbonyl compounds in tobacco smoke with analytical period less than four minutes. The contents of acrolein, acetone, propionaldehyde, crotonaldehyde, butanone, and butyraldehyde for a cigarette were about 63 ± 5.8, 325 ± 82, 55 ± 9.7, 11 ± 1.4, 67 ± 5.9, and 12 ± 1.8 μg/cig, respectively. The experimental results indicated that the established method had the potential application in rapid determination of low molecular carbonyl compounds.

Highlights

Low molecular carbonyl compounds, existing in the cigarette smoke and automobile exhaust, aroused extensive attention due to their adverse effects on human health [1, 2]
The generation of [MH]+ was ascribed to proton transfer reaction, where the proton affinities (PA) of low molecular carbonyl compounds were higher than that of water
The full scan mass spectrum of tobacco smoke was shown in Figure 5; low molecular carbonyl compounds of acetaldehyde (m/z 45), acrolein (m/z 57), crotonaldehyde (m/z 71), acetone/propionaldehyde (m/z 59), and butanone/butyraldehyde (m/z 73) were observed clearly

Summary

Introduction

Low molecular carbonyl compounds, existing in the cigarette smoke and automobile exhaust, aroused extensive attention due to their adverse effects on human health [1, 2]. Due to the relatively low boiling points and high vapor pressures, low molecular carbonyl compounds were easy to inhale by the human body and cause irritation of the eyes and throat, headache, sickness, and even cancers [3, 4]. Carbonyl compounds reacted to derivatization reagents firstly and analysis by capillary electrophoresis, chromatography, or chromatography coupled with mass spectrometer [5,6,7,8,9]. These analytical methods usually involved derivatization and multistep sample preparation procedure, which were labor-intensive, timeconsuming, and tedious. Six low molecular carbonyl compounds in tobacco smoke were detected with APCIMS/MS to test and prove the developed method

Experimental

Results and Discussion

Conclusion