The determination of hydrogen peroxide generated from cigarette smoke with an ultrasensitive and highly selective chemiluminescence method

Monitoring hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in aqueous cigarette smoke condensate (CSC) is helpful for interpreting the relationship between cigarette smoke and oxidative stress, inflammation and disease. It is also significative for elucidating the pathogenic effects of CSC. In this paper, a novel flow-injection chemiluminescence (FI-CL) method was well established for determination of H2O2 in the complex sample CSC which did not need pretreatment. The sensitive and selective method is based on the CL reaction of luminol with low concentration (10−7 mol L−1) and H2O2 at low concentration level (<10−8 mol L−1) in an alkaline medium catalyzed by a complex K5[Cu(HIO6)2] (DPC), which has proved no interference of other metal ions or horseradish peroxidase (HRP). The proposed method had been used to determine trace amount of H2O2 with a limit of detection (3σ) of 4.1 × 10−11 mol L−1, which enables minimal amount of sample for analysis. A satisfactory result has been gained for the determination of H2O2 in CSC sample by use of the proposed method. The concentration of H2O2 in two reference cigarette (84 cm, Longfeng) smoke condensate have been determined at 4–6 μmol L−1 level.