A sensitive method for the determination of tobacco-specific nitrosamines in mainstream and sidestream smokes of combustion cigarettes and heated tobacco products by online in-tube solid-phase microextraction coupled with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

A simple and sensitive method, using automated online in-tube solid-phase microextraction (SPME) coupled with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), was developed for the determination of four tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs) in mainstream and sidestream smoke of combustion cigarettes and heated tobacco products. These TSNAs were separated within 4 min on a Capcell Pak C18 MGⅢ column and detected in the positive ion mode by multiple reaction monitoring. The optimum in-tube SPME conditions were 30 draw/eject cycles of 40 μL of sample at a flow rate of 200 μL min^-1 using a Supel-Q PLOT capillary column as an extraction device. The extracted TSNAs were easily desorbed from the column by passage of the mobile phase, with no carryover observed. This in-tube SPME LC-MS/MS method showed good linearity for four TSNAs in the 0.5-100 pg mL^-1 ranges, with correlation coefficients above 0.9998 (n = 24), using stable isotope-labeled TSNAs as internal standards. The validation assays for limit of detection, limit of quantification, specificity, precision and accuracy of the analytes were consistent with the requirements recommended by the ICH guidelines. The validated method was utilized successfully to analyze four TSNAs in mainstream and sidestream smoke samples without any interference peaks. Overall recoveries of TSNAs spiked into smoke sample solutions were 97.3-104.6%. The developed method can automate the extraction, concentration and analysis of samples, and is sensitive and selective for TSNAs. This method was used to analyze TSNAs in mainstream and sidestream smoke samples of several commercially available combustion cigarettes and heated tobacco products.