"Exposure assessment to VOCs by breath analysis" 

Mizukoshi Atsushi¹, Kumagai Kazukiyo¹, Shinohara Naohide², Fujii Minoru³, Yanagisawa Yukio¹

¹The University of Tokyo 
²National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
³Nationallnstitute for Environmental Studies

ISEA2004 (Philadelphia, United States 2004/10/19)

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Abstract

Health effect caused by daily life exposure to VOCs has become a serious problem. It is inevitable to assess exposure to VOCs to elucidate the health effects. Therefore in this study, a simple method to measure VOC concentrations in an exhaled breath was developed and was applied to an exposure assessment in an ordinary environment.

The exhaled breath was collected with the alveolar air sampling instrument consisting of a mouthpiece, a discard bag and a sampling bag with a drying tube. When a subject exhales his/her breath into this instrument, dead space air is collected in the discard bag. Therefore only dry alveolar air through the drying tube is sampled into the sampling bag. The VOCs in the sampling bag were collected in the sampling tube filled with carbon adsorbent by using a pump and analyzed with thermal desorption-gas chromatograph mass spectrometer (TD-GC/MS). 

The collection efficiencies of each VOC with this method were tested by a spike recovery test, and these values were used to adjust the VOC concentrations in the exhaled breath.

A pilot study was performed with this method. The exhaled breath was sampled every 2 hours for a day hours for one subject and the personal exposure through the period was measured in parallel.
 
As a result, an overtime course trend of toluene concentration in the exhaled breath was similar to that of personal exposure. 

It was indicated that VOC concentrations in the exhaled breath were influenced by the recent exposure. On the contrary, alpha-pinene was detected in the exhaled breath when it wasn’t in the personal exposure. It shows that alpha-pinene might be held inside body.

 Consequently, VOC concentrations in the exhaled breath were influenced complexly by the recent exposure and internal dose. 

Keywords

breath analysis, VOC, Exposure assessment, sampling bag,