In the United States, 19.3% of adults use some form of tobacco. Nicotine is a compound that is present in tobacco. Nicotine also has been detected in the calculus of teeth of archaeological specimens. The teeth are often well-preserved in unidentified human remains and are resilient in terms of damage from physical or chemical degradation. Dental plaque and calculus form on teeth and can entrap many chemical traces of compounds to which teeth are exposed. Many studies have examined the calculus microscopically and chemically using various techniques to establish patterns in diet, behavior, and health. Forensic odontologists can assist in the identification of individuals using dental records, but some individuals may not have recent or relevant records. In addition, some skeletal remains might only include a partial mandible or maxillae or may consist of only disarticulated teeth. However, given their representation in the anthropological record and the persistence of dental calculus on teeth postmortem, analyzing teeth for behavioral indicators can provide anthropologists with significant information to assist with identifying an individual. For example, detecting the presence of nicotine from teeth can provide information about tobacco use habits of an individual. In this study, the hypothesis was tested whether nicotine can be detected from teeth. It was also hypothesized that different behaviors of use would yield different quantities of nicotine in calculus, and that some nicotine in lower but detectable quantities may still be present from the teeth of non-users.
Eighty-two teeth from the Boston University Goldman School of Dentistry were collected from tobacco users and non-users, which were determined by anonymous survey. All teeth were analyzed using gas chromatography mass spectrometry. Three types of sample extraction were tested. Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) was used with two subgroups of the overall sample. For Sample Groups A (n=41) and B (n=18), teeth were heated at 80ºC for an hour in a 20 mL SPME vial. An 85 μm polyacrylate SPME fiber was exposed to the headspace of the vials for 15 minutes for teeth in group A and 30 minutes for teeth in group B. For sample group C (n=24), teeth were sonicated in 5 mL ethanol for 30 minutes. After sonication, the ethanol was pipetted into autosampler GC vials. All samples were analyzed on an Agilent Technologies 7890A Gas Chromatography system connected to and Agilent Technologies 5975C inert XL EI/CI Mass Spectrometer and data produced were analyzed using Agilent ChemStation Software. Gas chromatography –mass spectrometry parameters were consistent across all samples, with a solvent delay for the group C samples.
Results indicated that while SPME is sensitive enough to detect spiked nicotine from prepared samples, the extraction method did not show any significant data which would identify users. For the samples which were extracted by sonication in methanol, there was an increased likelihood that teeth belonging to a user had a positive identification for nicotine. Of the sonicated samples, 63.6% of teeth from tobacco users showed a positive hit after sonication, while none of the non-user teeth had positive nicotine hits. However, the amount of nicotine detected from each sample does not necessarily reflect tobacco user behavior such as daily frequency, years of use, or type of tobacco.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/44009 |
| Date | 10 March 2022 |
| Creators | Muschal, Alexis |
| Contributors | Pokines, James T., Hall, Adam B. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
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