The Optimum Conditioning Time for Determining TNCO Yields of Menthol Cigarettes

Since menthol cigarettes were patented in the United Sates in 1925 by Lloyd "Spud" Hughes, in the early 1980's, a considerable amount of research was conducted on menthol cigarettes. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's 2006 Cigarettes Report, menthol cigarettes constitute 20 percent of the American market. And a 2008 study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration indicates that 33.9 percent of smokers use menthol cigarettes, compared to 31 percent in 2004. Recently, menthol tobacco brands represent approximately one fourth of the cigarettes sold and consumed all over the world. Therefore, the demand for systematic analysis of menthol cigarettes increased rapidly. However, accredited analytical methods for menthol cigarettes have not been well established until now. Menthol has a various characteristics such as migration and transfer to cigarettes smoke caused by its high volatility at room temperature. As a result of this property, intractable variation in sample handling and data acquisition occurred frequently. On that account, we have tried to minimize those error factors. In this study, we checked menthol delivery rate to cigarette mainstream smoke as well as NFDPM, nicotine and carbon monoxide according to conditioning time in order to search for appropriate conditioning time of menthol cigarettes. In addition, we examined the correlation between amount of menthol applied at manufacturing stage and menthol delivery rate to cigarettes smoke with regard to sample conditioning time. In conclusion, we found out that there was a difference in menthol delivery rate between conventional conditioning time and experimentally modified one. And we provisionally have come to the conclusion that seventy two hour's conditioning time is more appropriate rather than forty two hours so as to get more reliable TNCO dat for menthol cigarettes. For more information, we tried some additional approach such as menthol by tar ratio, tar by nicotine ratio, reduction ratio and menthol delivery rate comparing with initial volume by conditioning time. Rotary type was used for cigarette smoking and sample cigarettes were three levels of NFDPM and all experiments had been replicated more than five times.