On-site biological monitoring for exposure to VOCs by portable gas-chromatograph

对挥发性有机化合物(VOCs)暴露的生物监测是通过其特定的尿代谢物实现的。但是，已知的是，母体VOCs在生物体液中的浓度。作为血液和尿液，与其代谢产物相比，一般与暴露强度的相关性更密切。在过去的10年里，许多文献表明，尿液中的VOCs与环境暴露有很好的相关性，因此可以用于生物监测，在尿液分析中，受试者可以很容易地提供足够数量的样品进行分析。但是，生物液中的VOCs很容易挥发，这可能会导致含量的损失。对于生物液中VOCs的分析定量，样品采集和保存过程中VOCs的损失是最重要的不确定因素。在本工作中，我们发展了一种利用顶空气相色谱对生物液中VOCs进行现场分析的方法，因为现场分析可以将损失降到最低。使用配备光电离化检测器的野外便携式气相色谱仪“旅行者”，进行了小瓶顶空分析和注射器顶空分析。用该方法成功地测定了苯、甲苯、三氯乙烯和四氯乙烯等痕量挥发性有机物在亚ppb水平上的血样和尿样。该方法可以方便地对非接触者的环境VOCs暴露进行现场生物监测

Biological monitoring of exposure to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) has been achieved via their specific urinary metabolites. But, it is known that concentrations of parent VOCs in biological fluids such. as blood and urine, generally show closer correlation with the exposure intensity than their metabolites. In the last 10 years many publications have shown that the urinary VOCs are well correlated with environmental exposure and could therefore be used for biological monitoring, In the urinalysis, subjects can easily provide samples of sufficient volume for analysis. But, VOCs in biological fluids can be volatilized easily and that may cause loss of contents. For analytical quantification of VOCs in biological fluids, loss of VOCs during specimen collection and preservation is the most important uncertaintiesIn this work, we developed the method far on-site analysis of VOCs in biological fluids using head space gas chromatography, as on-site analysis can minimize a loss. We applied vial head space analysis and syringe head space analysis employing "Voyager", a field portable gas-chromatograph equipped photoionization detector (PID). By proposed method, blood and urinary trace concentrations of VOCs such as benzene, toluene, trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene were successfully determined at sub-ppb level. On-site biological monitoring of environmental VOCs exposure of non-exposed subjects can be performed easily by the proposed method