Sensitive and selective determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in mainstream cigarette smoke using a graphene-coated solid-phase microextraction fiber prior to GC/MS

•A simple SPME–GC/MS method for the simultaneous determination of 16 PAHs in mainstream cigarette smoke has been developed.•This method exhibits a good linear range, repeatability, accuracy and low detection limits.•The method is highly selective and able to exclude the aliphatic interferences that existed in previously published methods.

A simple method has been developed for the simultaneous determination of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in mainstream cigarette smoke. The procedure is based on employing a homemade graphene-coated solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fiber for extraction prior to GC/MS. In comparison to commercial 100-μm poly(dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS) fiber, the graphene-coated SPME fiber exhibits advantageous cleanup and preconcentration efficiencies. By collecting the particulate phase 5 cigarettes, the LODs and LOQs of 16 target PAHs were 0.02–0.07 and 0.07–0.22 ng/cigarette, respectively, and all of the linear correlation efficiencies were larger than 0.995. The validation results also indicate that the method has good repeatability (RSD between 4.2% and 9.5%) and accuracy (spiked recoveries between 80% and 110%). The developed method was applied to analyze two Kentucky reference cigarettes (1R5F and 3R4F) and six Chinese brands of cigarettes. In addition, the PAH concentrations in the particulate phase of the smoke from the 1R5F Kentucky cigarettes were in good agreement with recently reported results. Due to easy operation and good validation results, this SPME–GC/MS method may be an excellent alternative for trace analysis of PAHs in cigarette smoke.

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