College

College of Science

Department/Unit

Physics

Document Type

Article

Source Title

International Journal of Electrochemical Science

Volume

12

Issue

5

First Page

3859

Last Page

3872

Publication Date

5-1-2017

Abstract

The heavy metal contamination in tobacco (nicotania tabacum) and tobacco products was investigated in this study. Samples of commercially available cigarettes and traditional Philippine cigars, dried tobacco leaves, tobacco stalk, and soil were tested to confirm their heavy metal content. The World Health Organization (WHO) limits for Cd2+, Pb2+, and Cu2+ are 3 ppb, 10 ppb and 2 ppm, respectively. All the cigarette brands and variants in this study are all way above the WHO's toxicity limits for the aforementioned heavy metals. Henceforth, all the cigarette variants in this study can be inferred to be dangerously toxic. The heavy metal detection was done with a glassy carbon electrode modified with gold nanoparticles (AuNP), graphene and Nafion® using the drop coating method. The modified electrodes were optimized by varying the concentration of graphene and AuNP and their effects were subsequently determined by the measurement of their analytical sensitivity, limits of detection, and limits of quantitation. Atomic absorption spectroscopy was performed to validate the concentrations of the heavy metals detected via anodic stripping voltammetry. The statistically insignificant difference between the concentrations detected through anodic stripping voltammetry and atomic absorption spectroscopy shows that the modified electrodes exhibited optimum detection properties. In addition, the transfer factors from soil to tobacco stalk, as well as, soil to tobacco leaf were also computed. © 2017 The Authors.

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Digitial Object Identifier (DOI)

10.20964/2017.05.14

Keywords

Tobacco—Heavy metal content; Cigarettes; Graphene; Nanoparticles; Anodic stripping voltammetry

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