Developing a method for detecting caffeine, nicotine, and marijuana in human hair using GC/MS

CHED 214

Julie E. Dexheimer, jed12@duke.edu and George R. Dubay, george.dubay@duke.edu. Department of Chemistry, Duke University, P.O. Box 99847, Durham, NC 27708
Others have used gas chromatography/mass spectrometry to determine the concentration of a variety of chemicals in hair. In this project, a new method was developed to prepare hair samples to be analyzed by GC/MS for caffeine, nicotine, cotinine (a metabolite of nicotine), and Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (the major active chemical in marijuana). This method includes the addition of dimethylformamide when concentrating the sample to a fixed volume. The amount of these chemicals in hair samples of volunteers was quantified by using 13C-labelled caffeine as an internal standard and by creating calibration curves for each chemical.