Journal des techniques analytiques et bioanalytiques

Abstrait

Simple Determination of Sugars in Cigarettes

Eugene Jansen, Johannes Cremers, Simon Borst and Reinskje Talhout

Simple sugars are an important constituent of tobacco, varying between almost 0 and 20% on weight of tobacco. Some manufacturers add sugars to the natural content in tobacco. In the present report, a simple and fast method is presented to analyze the concentrations of the sugars sucrose, glucose and fructose in cigarettes. After an extraction step, the diluted samples are applied to an isocratic HPLC system with detection by evaporated light scattering (ELSD). The method is very stable and sensitive with a good reproducibility. In one working day 80 samples of cigarettes can be processed and prepared for overnight HPLC analysis by one technician. The average total sugar content in 58 commercial cigarette brands is 17.4% (w/w) with a range of 1.9 to 18.3%.