Determination of nicotine in oral smokeless tobacco products

In order to accurately determine the content of nicotine in oral smokeless tobacco products, a gas chromatography-flame ionization (GC-FID) method was developed, wherein the pretreatment of samples and test conditions were optimized. A total of 23 kinds of pouched snus, 20 kinds of nicotine chewing gums and 2 kinds of dissolvable tobacco were analyzed by the developed method. The results showed that:1) The limit of detection and limit of quantitation were 0.01 and 0.05 mg/g, respectively; the recoveries were 90.2%-106.2%, and intra-day and inter-day precisions were 0.80%-3.27% and 0.92%-4.81%, respectively. 2) Two samples of pouched snus did not contain nicotine, the nicotine contents in the other pouched snus were 6.19-17.08 mg/g. For those chewing gum samples nicotine levels were 1.20-3.95 mg/g, and those two dissolvable tobacco were 0.85 and 1.62 mg/g, respectively. This method is sensitive, accurate and suitable for the quantitative determination of nicotine in oral smokeless tobacco products.