Simultaneous determination of four heavy metal ions in tobacco and tobacco additive by online enrichment followed by RP-HPLC and microwave digestion

A new method for the simultaneous determination of tin, lead, cadmium, and mercury in tobacco and tobacco additive by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography combined with microwave digestion and an online enrichment technique is developed. The tin, lead, cadmium, and mercury ions are precolumn derivatized with tetra-(4-dimethylaminophenyl)-porphyrin (T(4)-DMAPP) to form color chelates. The Sn-T(4)-DMAPP, Hg-T(4)-DMAPP, Cd-T(4)-DMAPP, and Pb-T(4)-DMAPP chelates are absorbed onto the front of the enrichment column using a buffer solution of 0.05 mol/L pyrrolidine-acetic acid (pH = 10.0) as the mobile phase. After the concentration is finished (by switching the six-port switching valve) the retained chelates are back-flushed by the mobile phase and move to the analytical column. The chelate separation on the analytical column is satisfactory using gradient elution with methanol (containing 0.05 mol/L pyrrolidine-acetic acid buffer salt, pH = 10.0) and tetrahydrofuran (containing 0.05 mol/L pyrrolidine-acetic acid buffer salt, pH = 10.0). The linearity range is 0.01-120 micro g/L for each metal ion. The detection limits (S/N = 3) of tin, lead, cadmium, and mercury are 0.6, 0.8, 0.5, and 0.6 ng/L, respectively. This method is applied to the determination of tin, lead, cadmium, and mercury in tobacco and it's additive with good results.