2023 Volume 28 Issue 2 Pages 169-176
Cyanide is a gaseous poison which is liberated from cyanide compounds such as potassium cyanide. In spite of high toxicity, cyanide compounds are easily accessible for industrial use, and some contamination cases of cyanide into beverages have occurred. For analysis of cyanide, various analytical methods such as colorimetric methods have been reported. Among those, headspace-gas chromatography-nitrogen phosphorus detection (HS-GC-NPD) is known for its easy pretreatment method and high quantitation ability. The application of HS-GC-NPD analysis to cyanide in blood specimens have been reported by many groups. However, comparison results of some experimental manipulations, such as addition of acid, syringes used for introduction of samples to the GC, and amount of sample introduced into the GC are not clear. In addition, there is no detailed description about application to beverage samples. In this work, we have investigated some experimental manipulation of manual HS-GC-NPD and applied the optimized method to beverage samples. After the optimization, the addition of acid with micropipette in open system and introduction of 100 μL of headspace gas into GC with gastight syringe are recommended. For beverage samples, although variations were larger than standard samples, those variations could be compensated by use of acetonitrile as an internal standard.
