For those that don’t know, I chose to measure the CO concentration in cigarette smoke for my Chemistry 4B special project. I wanted to see how much CO gas a smoker inhales with each draw, and I also wanted to see if there was any difference between the CO concentration in regular, unfiltered, and ‘light’ cigarettes.
I was able to sample Marlboro Red, Marlboro Light, and Camel unfiltered cigarettes today. In each case, I used my cigarette smoker to simulate a person smoking and withdrew 10 mL samples of the ‘inhaled’ smoke. I filtered the cigarette smoke to remove residual tar and injected my samples into a glass gas cell. I transferred the cell to an FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscope) and measured the absorbance of the CO gas in each sample.
Because I had yet to prepare calibration standards, I was only able to make two preliminary qualitative conclusions. The first one may be surprising:
1. There is no difference between the CO concentration in Marlboro Red and Marlboro Light cigarettes. Although there may be less nicotine in the latter’s smoke, the level of inhaled CO remains the same. Consequently, ‘light’ cigarettes may be less addictive, but they are just as toxic.
2. Unfiltered cigarettes contain a significantly higher concentration of CO than filtered cigarettes. In addition, there was more tar in the unfiltered cigarette smoke.
I have included some pictures of my project; more can be found here. Thanks to Shelly for kindly lending her digital camera.
Experiment Setup:
Cigarette Smoker:
Gas Cell in FTIR:
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