Monitoring of pyridine, 3-picoline and quinoline in smokers’ urine using ultrasound-assisted emulsification microextraction coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography

The present work describes application of ultrasound-assisted emulsification microextraction (USAEME) method for simultaneous determination of pyridine, 3-picoline and quinoline followed by high-performance liquid chromatography in smokers’ urine samples. For this purpose, the influences of different parameters affecting the USAEME procedure were evaluated to optimize the efficiency of the microextraction process. The optimum conditions were found to be 50 µL of 1-hexanol as extraction solvent as well as ionic strength of 15 % (w/v) NaCl. Under the optimum extraction conditions, the preconcentration factors were found in the range of 60–270 and 50–230 corresponding to the limits of detection in the range of 0.1–16 and 0.5–32 μg L−1 in water and urine samples, respectively. Finally, the proposed method was successfully applied for the determination of pyridine derivatives in some urine samples taken from cigarette smokers.