Aluminum in Tobacco Products Available in the United States

A quantitative method for the analysis of aluminum in tobacco products was developed, validated and applied to select samples. Samples were prepared using standard microwave digestion of tobacco from various products. Detection and quantification utilized sector field inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. Method applicability to analyze aluminum in a range of tobacco products was demonstrated with quantitative analyses of smokeless tobacco products, cigarette tobacco, little cigar tobacco and roll-your-own/pipe tobacco. Though these products represent a convenience sampling, we observed that smokeless tobacco products, as a category, had the lowest average aluminum concentrations. Roll-your-own or pipe tobacco and little cigar tobacco had higher median and ranges of aluminum concentrations than cigarette and smokeless tobacco samples.