Anabasine‐based measurement of cigarette consumption using wastewater analysis

Abstract

Community tobacco use can be monitored over time using wastewater‐based epidemiological approaches by estimating the mass loads of nicotine and its metabolites, cotinine, or hydroxycotinine, in wastewater. However, due to the use of nicotine in smoking cessation products, other sources of nicotine contribute to cotinine and hydroxycotinine loads. The use of nicotine replacement therapies could vary in space and time and mask the true rates of tobacco consumption. Therefore, this work evaluated the content of tobacco specific markers, anatabine and anabasine, in cigarettes, in urine of smokers, and in wastewater. The results indicated that the anabasine content in both licit and illicit cigarettes in Australia is less variable than anatabine and is therefore considered a better measure of tobacco consumption. A study determining the excretion of tobacco‐specific alkaloids of smoking and non‐smoking volunteers gave an average urinary mass load of anabasine of 4.38 μg/L/person and a daily mass load of 1.13 μg/day/person. Finally, this was compared with the mass loads of anabasine from wastewater‐based epidemiology data of 3 μg/day/person to estimate cigarette rates in a South Australian city: equivalent to 2.6 cigarettes/person/day. The rate of decline of cigarette use was greater when using anabasine as a measure of consumption compared with cotinine. This is the first study to estimate the rate of anabasine excretion, which can be used to estimate tobacco use independent of therapeutically prescribed nicotine.

Assessment of Environmental Pollution and Human Exposure to Pesticides by Wastewater Analysis in a Seven-Year Study in Athens, Greece

“…However, recent studies have shown that the presence of this compound in IWW is predominantly associated to tobacco use. Indeed, there are many studies that have used anabasine as a WBE biomarker to measure tobacco consumption [35,36]. Therefore, no further research was performed for anabasine, as the revealed concentrations were not related to its use as a pesticide and the estimation of tobacco consumption is outside the scope of the current study.…”

“…Consequently, the concentration levels in the IWW of the city of Athens are the sum of all individual inputs occurring from the various uses. For instance, cyproconazole is approved as both plant protection and biocidal active substance, while the environmental occurrence of anabasinewhich is not registered under any of the three regulations (plant protection, biocides and REACH)-can be related to tobacco products, based on literature data [35,36]. In addition, the detection of atrazine degradation products is attributed to the high atrazine application in the past and its high persistence in soils [37].…”

Estimation of alcohol and nicotine consumption in 11 cities of Turkey using wastewater‐based epidemiology

“…34 The limitation of this situation is that the ability to estimate the number of cigarettes consumed via analysis of the total excretion rates is not well characterized for anabasine and anatabine as for cotinine and hydroxycotinine. As a result, anabasine and anatabine were not performed in our study because a back-calculation factor for estimating the actual number of cigarettes smoked via measuring excreted mass loads is not available for these two alkaloids 18 and there were no their reference standard materials in our laboratory.…”

“…Two tobacco‐specific alkaloids—anabasine and anatabine—together with nicotine and cotinine, can be assessed as biological markers for tobacco consumption in wastewater 17 . However, there are some limitations to back‐calculation factors for estimating tobacco consumption using wastewater analysis for the two compounds 18 …”

“…17 However, there are some limitations to backcalculation factors for estimating tobacco consumption using wastewater analysis for the two compounds. 18 This study aimed to estimate the quantity of alcohol and nicotine consumed in 2019 in Turkey, utilizing the WBE with simultaneous sampling in 11 cities. Additionally, the WBE estimate results were compared with data of the sales statistics and surveys to be able to gain better insights on nicotine and alcohol consumption.…”