Assessment of tobacco-specific N-nitrosamines in tobacco products.

lengthy enrichment procedures in earlier studies. The highly sensitive and specific TEA (7) simplifies the quantitative deter mination of nitrosamines, in that these nonvolatile compounds need only be concentrated once prior to separation by HPLC and detection. For an accurate measurement of these nitrosamines in chew ing tobacco, tobacco leaves, and unaged smoke, extraction procedures as well as trapping ofthe freshly generated aerosol require the presence of ascorbic acid at pH 4.5 (15, 21). [14C]NNNserves as internal standard for the quantitative anal ysis. This study reports quantitative data for NNN, NNK, and the newly identified NAtB in smoking and in chewing tobaccos and in the unaged mainstream smoke of cigarettes and cigars. Sidestream smoke, which is generated during smoldering of tobacco in between puffs, frequently contains higher concen trations of these tobacco-specific N-nitmosaminesthan does mainstream smoke.