Scientists at British American Tobacco have developed a technique to detect unpredicted substances in e-cigarette vapour, BAT said.

“Using thermal desorption – gas chromatography – time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TD–GC–TOFMS), we have developed a technique that is sensitive enough to detect unforeseen volatile and semi-volatile substances in e-cigarette vapour,” BAT said. “Importantly, this is done from a single, 3-second puff and at 5ng/puff or more, a sensitivity BAT toxicologists have identified as best practice for risk assessing tobacco and nicotine products. Moreover, the method incorporates a robust quality control process to distinguish possible chemical artefacts formed during analysis.”