Monitoring tobacco alkaloids in urine and wastewater for consumption estimation purpose

Monitoring tobacco use is of high interest for both public health and law enforcement. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) offers a complementary tool for estimating consumption of tobacco in a high spatial- temporal resolution. Previous WBE studies monitoring tobacco use have mainly used two metabolites of nicotine, cotinine and hydroxycotinine, as specific tobacco biomarkers in wastewater. However, there is a need to expand the biomarkers to the minor tobacco alkaloids anabasine, and anatabine, that are present in tobacco but not in most nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products due to the increase in popularity of e-cigarettes and NRT products. We are presenting results of our latest measurement of those alkaloids in both urine and wastewater samples to evaluate the applicability of those biomarkers in WBE.   

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.