HPLC analysis and reactions of N-Nitrosamines.

Abstract

N-Nitrosamines are known carcinogens and have already been found in those materials concerned about our daily life. So the object of this project was to develop a simple, rapid and accurate method for N-Nitrosamines and to apply the method to the detection of N-Nitrosamines and to study of their subsequent reactions. The compounds used here, are N-Nitrosodimethylamine, N-Nitrosodiethylamine, N-Nitrosodipropylamine and N-Nitrosodiphenylamine. The method presented here is to use HighPerformance Liquid Chromatography with a reverse-phase column, methanol-water mixtures as the mobile phase and a UV detector. The HPLC chromatograms are well defined and every run can be completed within 10 minutes. Although some reports stressed that ascorbic acid can block the formation of N-Nitrosamines, from the results of this project, it can be infered that ascorbic acid cannot affect the N-Nitrosamines or reduce them when NNitrQsamines have already formed. Finally. the detection of N-Nitrosamines in cigarette smoke was performed and analyzed by HPLC. There were complicate peaks on the chromatogram due to the extra compounds present. In this project, the advanced clean-up procedures were not performed, but two methods for clean-up in references would be recommended.