Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15(2), 323; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15020323
Qualitative Analysis of E-Liquid Emissions as a Function of Flavor Additives Using Two Aerosol Capture Methods
1
College of Science, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY 14623, USA
2
National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY 14623, USA
3
UR Medical Center, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA
4
Kate Gleason College of Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY 14623, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 13 December 2017 / Revised: 8 February 2018 / Accepted: 9 February 2018 / Published: 13 February 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electronic Cigarette Use and Public Health)
Abstract
This work investigates emissions sampling methods employed for qualitative identification of compounds in e-liquids and their resultant aerosols to assess what capture methods may be sufficient to identify harmful and potentially harmful constituents present. Three popular e-liquid flavors (cinnamon, mango, vanilla) were analyzed using qualitative gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) in the un-puffed state. Each liquid was also machine-puffed under realistic-use flow rate conditions and emissions were captured using two techniques: filter pads and methanol impingers. GC-MS analysis was conducted on the emissions captured using both techniques from all three e-liquids. The e-liquid GC-MS analysis resulted in positive identification of 13 compounds from the cinnamon flavor e-liquid, 31 from mango, and 19 from vanilla, including a number of compounds observed in all e-liquid experiments. Nineteen compounds were observed in emissions which were not present in the un-puffed e-liquid. Qualitative GC-MS analysis of the emissions samples identify compounds observed in all three samples: e-liquid, impinge, and filter pads, and each subset thereof. A limited number of compounds were observed in emissions captured with impingers, but were not observed in emissions captured using filter pads; a larger number of compounds were observed on emissions collected from the filter pads, but not those captured with impingers. It is demonstrated that sampling methods have different sampling efficiencies and some compounds might be missed using only one method. It is recommended to investigate filter pads, impingers, thermal desorption tubes, and solvent extraction resins to establish robust sampling methods for emissions testing of e-cigarette emissions. View Full-TextKeywords:
electronic cigarettes; emissions; regulatory science; flavor; harmful and potentially harmful constituents; e-liquid; tobacco product characteristics
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).

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Eddingsaas, N.; Pagano, T.; Cummings, C.; Rahman, I.; Robinson, R.; Hensel, E. Qualitative Analysis of E-Liquid Emissions as a Function of Flavor Additives Using Two Aerosol Capture Methods. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15, 323.
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