A review of environmental tobacco smoke and its determination in air

In this review, we discuss methodological approaches commonly employed for the determination of chemical components in environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Considering its compositional diversity and significant impact on human health, ETS analysis is important. Here we describe it along with the methodologies commonly available for smoke generation, sampling, and preconcentration of ETS components. We evaluate the performance of each experimental approach in terms of basic quality assurance. To this end, we emphasize gas chromatography-based detection methods by comparing absolute detectability and analytical feasibility for the most common ETS markers in a practical sense. Finally, we highlight the limitations and the future prospects in the study of ETS.