Simultaneous Determination of Tin, Nickel, Lead, Cadmium and Mercury in Cigarette Material by Solid Phase Extraction and HPLC

Abstract

A new method for the simultaneous determination of heavy metal ions in cigarette material by microwave digestion and reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) has been developed. The cigarette material was digested by microwave digestion. Lead, cadmium, mercury, nickel and tin ions in the digested samples were pre-column derivatized with tetra-(2-chlorophenyl)-porphyrin (T2-CPP) to form color chelates, which were then enriched by solid phase extraction with a C18 cartridge. The chelates were separated on a Waters Xterra™ RP 18 column by gradient elution with methanol (containing 0.05 mol/L pyrrolidine-acetic acid buffer salt, pH = 10.0) and acetone (containing 0.05 mol/L pyrrolidine-acetic acid buffer salt, pH = 10.0) as mobile phase at a flow rate of 0.5 mL/min and analyzed with a photodiode array detector from 350-600 nm. The detection limits of lead, cadmium, mercury, nickel and tin were 4, 3, 3, 8, and 5 ng/L, respectively, in the original samples. This method was afforded good results.