Simultaneous Analysis of Simple Coumarins and Furocoumarines in Cigarettes by Solid-Phase Extraction with Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

Abstract A sensitive, high-throughput analytical method based on a GC-MS method was established for the simultaneous quantitative determination of two categories of harmful coumarins: simple coumarins (coumarin, 6-methylcoumarin, 7-methoxycoumarin, 3,4-dihydrocoumarin, and 7-ethoxy-4-methylcoumarin) and furocoumarines (psoralen, 8-methoxypsoralen, 5-methoxypsoralen, and trioxysalen). The nine analytes were extracted with ethyl acetate, purified with Oasis HLB solid-phase extraction (SPE) cartridges, and identified and quantitatively determined by GC-MS in selected-ion monitoring mode. The LODs and LOQs of these compounds were in the ranges of 12.5–21.2 and 41.6–70.0 μg/kg, respectively. Average recoveries for the nine analytes ranged from 72.7 to 86.6% atLOQ, 1.5× LOQ, and 2× LOQ spike levels, with RSDs that were typically lower than 5.1%. TheSPE-GC-MS method developed in this study was initially applied to research coumarins in cigarette samples; it proved to be accurate, sensitive, convenient, and practical.