The construction and evaluation of equipment for smoking a cigarette and collecting all the products of combustion is described. The apparatus was designed to permit the quantitative puff-by-puff collection of mainstream TPM. It has been used to study the transference of nicotine-2'-14C-di(p-toluoyl tartrate) to tobacco smoke. The smoke transfer characteristics of endogenous and exogenous alkaloids were similar. Alkaloids (as nicotine) were found only in the particulate phase of smoke 14C-alkaloid accounting for approximately 95 % of the total 14C-activity recovered from mainstream and sidestream TPM.