AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Real-Time Chemical Puff Profiling of Vapor Product Aerosol with Proton Transfer Mass Spectrometry
Adam M. Ozvald, Devon C. O'Regan, Alessandra L. Paul, NADJA HEINE, Juul Labs, Inc.
Abstract Number: 372 Working Group: Health-Related Aerosols
Abstract The analysis of aerosol and gas phase volatile organic compounds (VOC) emitted by vapor products has relied on a variety of standardized but time‐consuming off-line technologies. Conventional methods typically involve the capture of aerosol from multiple sequential puffs (~50) on a filter pad, or in an impinger solution, followed by extraction and derivatization. These procedures are resource intensive and have low time-resolution, prohibiting puff-by-puff analysis, and may lead to sample alteration due to evaporation, water uptake, or chemical reactions on the filter. Real-time aerosol and VOC characterization methods can overcome these limitations and enable the direct assessment of multiple key components simultaneously. Recently, Breiev et al.1 demonstrated that proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) can be employed to achieve on-line quantification of the three main components of aerosol emitted from vapor products.
In this study, we present a novel methodology which combines a high-resolution PTR-MS with an improved aerosol dilution system and an actuating device to trigger aerosol production from the vapor product and direct it to the dilution system. We employed this methodology to analyze and quantify harmful or potentially harmful constituents (HPHCs) in aerosol emitted from vapor products and exhaled breath on a puff-by-puff basis in real-time.
The methodology was evaluated for applicability and stability in order to perform reliable, real-time quantification of HPHCs as well as to examine conditional use scenarios, such as the chemical puff profile at the end of battery or liquid supply. Key aerosol and VOC constituents of vapor products were directly and simultaneously characterized and quantified, and their LODs assessed and compared to standard offline methods. Concentrations of several compounds were determined puff-by-puff and validated with results obtained from a contract research laboratory using ISO 17025 accredited methods. The chemical puff profiles of different devices (e.g. temperature-regulated, unregulated, and ciga-likes) are presented. The real-time data demonstrates that harmful compounds were not detected for temperature regulated devices for the life of the pod, while in contrast, devices without temperature regulation exhibited significant increase of harmful compounds such as carbonyls and oxides at the end of liquid.
Lastly, we compared exhaled breath following the inhalation of mainstream aerosol from different vapor products and a combustible cigarette. We demonstrate that PTR-MS may be used as an alternative to off-line methods for simultaneous quantification and characterization of most HPHCs found in aerosol as well as VOCs, puff-by-puff, and even intra-puff to enable immediate assessment of new nicotine-containing formulations, changes in device design, and validation of product designs.
1 K. Breiev et al., Rapid Commun. Mass Spectrom. 2016, 30, 691.