Classification of the geographic origin of cigarettes according to Pb isotope ratios by inductively coupled plasma dynamic reaction cell mass spectrometry

Trace Pb is accumulated in the same isotopic ratio as it occurs in the source soil, and the isotopic composition of Pb could be used to reflect these sources and provide powerful indicators of the geographic origin of agricultural products. In this study, we developed a simple and valid method based on inductively coupled plasma dynamic reaction cell mass spectrometry (ICP-DRC-MS) for the determination of Pb isotope ratios to distinguish between the geographic origins of cigarettes. The cigarette digestion solutions were directly analysed by ICP-DRC-MS with pressuring a non-reactive gas Ne. In the DRC, Ne molecules collide with Pb ions and result in a 2.4-fold improvement in the average internal precision of Pb isotope ratios, which may be due to the improvement of the ion transmission or sensitivity (via collisional focusing) and the reduction of the plasma noise (via collisional energy damping). Under an optimum DRC rejection parameter q (RPq = 0.45), the main matrix components (K, Na, Ca, Mg, Al, Fe, etc.) originating from cigarettes were filtered out. Other important parameters such as detector dead time, dwell time per data acquisition and total integrated time per isotope were also optimized. Mass discrimination of the 208Pb/206Pb ratio in Ne DRC mode increased to 0.3% compared to the vented mode; this mass bias could be accurately corrected by using the NIST 981 Pb isotope standard solution. The accuracy and precision of this method were evaluated by using two cigarette reference materials (Oriental tobacco leaves CTA-OTL-1 and Virginia tobacco leaves CTA-VTL-2). The results of 208Pb/206Pb and 207Pb/206Pb were 2.0842 ± 0.0028 (2δ) and 0.8452 ± 0.0011 (2δ) for CTA-VTL-2, which were in agreement with the literature values (208Pb/206Pb = 2.0884 ± 0.0090 and 207Pb/206Pb = 0.8442 ± 0.0032), respectively. The Pb isotopic composition (208Pb/206Pb = 2.0812 ± 0.0028 and 207Pb/206Pb = 0.8460 ± 0.0018) of CTA-VTL-1 was reported for the first time in our study. The precision of Pb isotope ratios (208Pb/206Pb and 207Pb/206Pb) for the cigarette samples ranged from 0.05 to 0.12 % (N = 6). The proposed method has sufficient precision to distinguish between 91 cigarette brands that originated from four different geographic regions.