Description

Smoking tobacco products continues to be one of the leading causes of death in the United States, accounting for approximately one-fifth of deaths in adults1, despite tobacco products being less popular than they once were. Firsthand and secondhand smoke are both widely understood effects of smoking, however thirdhand smoke (THS) is a fairly new topic that is still being studied to understand its affects2. THS is the chemical residues left behind in an environment once smoking has ceased. These residues can persist in environments from mere minutes to many months2. THS is of particular concern in low-income communities, as smoking is more prevalent and multi-unit housing poses a higher risk2.The goal of this project is to develop an easy to use and affordable take-home test to detect nicotine in THS, as current testing is costly and requires complex instrumentation that isn’t readily available to the average person. To achieve this goal, we have developed a technique using liquid-liquid extraction of nicotine from an aqueous to a nonaqueous solvent. The detection makes use of a unique nicotine-dye complex which can be detected by the naked eye. Our original process used chloroform as the nonaqueous solvent, however its toxicity makes it unsuitable for use in a take-home test. In order to make this method suitable for home use, we have identified a deep eutectic solvent (DES) to act as our nonaqueous phase. DES are green solvents formed from a hydrogen bond donor and acceptor that when combined form a solvent that is low in toxicity and easy to synthesize. Using this method, we currently have a naked eye limit of detection (LOD) of 0.1 µM or 42 ng of nicotine in our samples. This presentation will describe our advances in using this DES in our analysis and compare the approaches we are taking to further lower the LOD that can be achieved with our colorimetric assay.