Estimates of tobacco use by wastewater analysis of anabasine and anatabine (2016)

Wastewater analysis, the chemical analysis of municipal sewage, is fast becoming the technique of choice to monitor changes in community consumption of a range of compounds over time. Currently wastewater analyses which estimate tobacco consumption focus on the major alkaloid nicotine and its urinary metabolite, cotinine. As nicotine is also present in replacement therapies such as nicotine gum and patches, this analysis is not specific and hence does not truly reflect the harmful consumption of tobacco. Two alkaloids – anabasine and anatabine – which are specific to dried tobacco, were assessed as biomarkers for tobacco consumption in wastewater, together with nicotine and cotinine. Consequently, solid phase extraction (SPE) and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) methods for the detection of anabasine, anatabine, nicotine, and cotinine in municipal wastewater were validated. All compounds were detected in wastewater extracts and found to have satisfactory recovery, accuracy, precision, and stability in wastewater. Daily flow volume and catchment population of the wastewater facility were used to estimate normalized consumption figures of mg/day/1000 people for composite samples collected over one week, in an application of the method. Anabasine and anatabine were found to be suitable wastewater biomarkers of tobacco and can be used to assess tobacco consumption of communities via wastewater analysis. Application of this methodology can be used to collect temporal consumption data which could be used to determine the efficacy of tobacco reduction strategies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.