The parents' addictions and eating habits have a significant influence on the child's growth. The first stool of a newborn baby provides a large amount of information about xenobiotics transmitted by the mother's body. The analytical technique used in the study is ion chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection (IC-PAD). The biological samples, which were obtained from women staying in a maternity ward and their partners, revealed cyanide concentrations in urine samples spanning 1.30-25.3 μg L-1. Meanwhile, the results of the meconium samples were in the range of 1.54 μg L-1 to 24.9 μg L-1. Under the optimized chromatographic conditions, the IC-PAD system exhibited satisfactory repeatability (R < 3%, n = 3) and good linearity in the range of 1-100 μg L-1. Thus, it proved to be an effective tool for monitoring trace cyanide concentration in a series of human body fluid matrices, including meconium. Based on the literature review, this is the first application of the IC-PAD analytical technique for the determination of cyanide ions in meconium samples.
Keywords: PLE; cyanide; ion chromatography; meconium; tobacco smoking; urine.