Analysis of exhaled breath from cigarette smokers using CMV-GC/MS

•Capillary micro-extraction of volatiles was used for breath analysis of smokers and non-smokers.•CMV identified 108 compounds in the breath of with 12 compounds determined as significant.•PCA was used to elucidate the groupings and non-smokers were correctly classified 100% of the time.•Future applications of CMV include detection of marijuana smokers' breath for impaired drivers.

The aim of this research was to investigate the potential of a novel preconcentration device, capillary micro-extraction of volatiles (CMV), for the application of breath analysis. The CMV offers dynamic sampling of volatile to semi-volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by the simple coupling of an adapter to a GC inlet for GC/MS analysis, in comparison to the expensive thermal desorption units needed for sorbent tubes. It additionally offers an increased surface area over a single SPME fiber. The CMV was used to sample and extract 108 compounds from the breath of 11 self-reported cigarette smokers and 7 non-smokers. Twelve (12) compounds were determined to be statistically significant between the groups. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) were used to distinguish the groups, resulting in 100% correct classification of all non-smokers. In some cases, nicotine was not detected in smokers and therefore some of those smokers were confused with the non-smokers. Nicotine was detected in the breath of 64% of all cigarette smokers with an average mass of 143 ± 31 pg from the approximate 5-liter breath sample collected within 1 h after smoking. The successful use of the CMV sampler for preconcentration of breath to distinguish between smokers and non-smokers serves as a proof of concept for future applications of the CMV for detection of marijuana smokers' breath for impaired driver management.

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