Measurement of tobacco consumption trends with two minor tobacco alkaloids: Application of wastewater-based epidemiology for long-term consumption trend in an Australian city

Tobacco is the most frequently used addictive legal substance in the world and its consumption causes considerable health burden in the society. Until now, most studies have used cotinine and hydroxycotinine, nicotine metabolites, as biomarkers to monitor consumption of tobacco products. However, with the increase in popularity of e-cigarettes and nicotine replacement therapy, the use of nicotine biomarkers only cannot distinguish between the consumption of tobacco and the new nicotine-containing products. Therefore, we developed and validated a high-throughput method for effective analysis of the minor tobacco alkaloids (anabasine and anatabine) in wastewater, which can be used as specific tobacco biomarkers to distinguish consumption of cigarette and other nicotine products (e-cigarette, nicotine replacement therapy). The method was applied in a 7-years wastewater sampling campaign to assess the tobacco consumption trends by these two minor tobacco alkaloids.

Qiuda Zheng completed his Bachelor of Marine Resources and Environment in 2015 followed by a Master degree of Environmental Science and Engineering in 2018. Qiuda joined QAEHS in 2018 for a PhD and is researching on tobacco and alcohol consumption through wastewater-based epidemiology.

Please note this is a 30 minute update by a QAEHS PhD student.