Abstract
Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is present in both the particulate and vapor phase of cigarette mainstream smoke. It is one of the 44 harmful substances on Hoffmann's list and is known to be a major ciliatoxic agent in cigarette mainstream smoke. Typically the determination of HCN in cigarette mainstream smoke has been done through colorimetric and electrochemical techniques, such as UV-spectrophotometry (UV), continuous flow analyzer (CFA), ion chromatography (IC) and capillary GC-ECD. In particular, CFA commonly has been using analysis hydrogen cyanide in cigarette smoke and the basic principle is pyridine-pyrazolone reaction. In this study, the more optimized analytical method is suggested isonicotinic acid-pyrazolone reaction method than previous pyridine-pyrazolone reaction method, a commonly used method for the determination of cyanide in water and air, by CFA. Sample collection was optimized by trapping particulate and vapor phase of smoke separately. The optimum NaOH concentration of the trapping solution was shown to be 0.2 M. HCN was stable up to 6 hours in this concentration but only 3 hours in 0.1 M solution. The sensitivity of this method was fairly good and it might be used in analysis of HCN in cigarette mainstream smoke.