Abstract
We developed an internal standard-based method to analyze the vapor phase components of mainstream smoke. This method collects vapor phase components from sample cigarettes, which are smoked by a linear automatic smoking machine in a sampling bag. An internal standard gas was introduced to the bag. A 6-port valve with a 2-ml sampling loop was placed between the vapor phase smoke outlet of the smoking machine and the bag to regulate the volume of the internal standard. The mixed gas sample was then introduced, by an automatic injection device developed in-house, to a gas chromatograph (GC) for ten successive analyses. The sample in the bag was analyzed every two hours to assess the time serial changes of vapor phase smoke components as well as of the internal standard. After 18 hours, in the tenth analysis, the amounts of 37 vapor phase components decreased by less than 5 % from those in the first analysis. The repeatability of the sample analysis was assessed and 45 vapor phase components had coefficients of variation of less than 5 %. The overall reproducibility of this method including tobacco samples and instruments was also assessed using five other sampling bags and achieved coefficients of variation of less than 6 % for 42 vapor phase components. The advantages of this method include capability to handle 10 tobacco samples in a serial manner, capability to collect both the vapor phase and semivolatile components, and precise, easy and continuous component analyses. We also present the results of multivariate analyses for the vapor phase and semivolatile components from 59 sample cigarettes.