Magnetic particulate matters in the ashes of few commonly used Indian cigarettes Ashis Bhattacharjee & Haradhan Mandal & Madhusudan Roy & Joachim Kusz & Maciej Zubko Received: 19 December 2013 /Accepted: 7 July 2014 # Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014 Abstract Physical aspects of tobacco samples, used in some commonly available Indian brands of cigarettes, with emphasis on their magnetic characterization before and after they get burnt into ashes, are described. The present work highlights the ultrafine nature of the ciga- rette ashes and provides a compositional insight of their constituent particulate matters as revealed by the XRD and SEM studies. Based on the EDX spectra, elemental distributions of different tobacco samples, before and after they get burnt, are presented. In this work, mag- netic measurements of the un-burnt tobacco samples are reported. An attempt is made to shed light on the origin of magnetism observed in these samples. Keywords Cigarette ash . Particulate matter . SEM . EDX . XRD . Magnetism Introduction Investigation on combustion of organic matters such as, fuels, cigarettes, etc. are of great importance as regards environmental pollution (Wahlin et al. 2006) and envi- ronmental magnetism (Flanders 1994; Hay et al. 1997; Petrovsky and Elwood 1997 ; Shu et al. 2001 ; Muxworthy et al. 2002; Goddu et al. 2004). Particulate matters (PM) from combustion generally include a core of carbon layered with organic hydrocarbons, metals, nitrates, sulfate, etc. (Nel 2005). When inhaled, these PMs can construct an approach deep into the lung tissues and cause several life-threatening diseases of several dimensions like asthma and chronic bronchitis, activation of bacteria, heart attacks, heart rhythm distur- bances, etc. (Samet et al. 2000; Veranth et al. 2003; Brook et al. 2004; Wahlin et al. 2006). Particle size, surface area, and chemical composition of these PMs determine health risks posed by the pollutants. Ultrafine particles with typical dimension of nanometer-length scale are the most hazardous (Wahlin et al. 2006). Based on the combustion conditions, physical natures as well as magnetic response of these combustion products are found to vary (Jordanova et al. 2006). Hence, analysis of physical characteristics of these PMs entering human body is very much essential for better management of air pollutants. To the best of our knowledge, there are only two reports available on the magnetism of cigarette ashes (Jordanova et al. 2006; Cador et al. 2008). According to Jordanova et al. (Jordanova et al. 2006), magnetite as a main magnetic component along with some iron- Environ Monit Assess DOI 10.1007/s10661-014-3936-x Conversion of CGS to SI units—emu cm 3 =10 3 Am -1 , Oe=(10 3 / 4π)Am -1 , emu gm -1 =A m 2 kg -1 A. Bhattacharjee (*) : H. Mandal Department of Physics, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India e-mail: ashis.bhattacharjee@visva-bharati.ac.in M. Roy Surface Physics and Material Science Division, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, India J. Kusz Institute of Physics, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland M. Zubko Institute of Materials Science, University of Silesia, Chorzów, Poland