Application of thermal desorption to the biological monitoring of organic compounds in exhaled breath

A Field Method for Sampling Toluene in End-Exhaled Air, as a Biomarker of Occupational Exposure: Correlation with Other Exposure Indices.

“…that allows for the quantitative recovery of many solvents by thermal desorption: this makes it a very useful sorbent for collecting most of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from atmospheres of low concentrations, when monitoring for compound levels in ambient or relatively unpolluted indoor air, or even in biological samples 19,20) . Tenax ® is one of the most hydrophobic of all sorbents; its retention volume is barely affected by presence of water.…”

Determination of Acetone in Human Breath by Lithium Ion Attachment Mass Spectrometry

“…The first part of the exhaled air, which came from dead space in the mouth, nose, trachea, and bronchi was not collected because its contents would be closer to that of ambient air. 18) Breath samples were taken in the morning at 11 : 00 a.m. after a 15-hour fast following the last meal. Background ambient air samples were collected at the same time in aluminum bags.…”

Exhaled Breath Analysis of Smokers Using CMV-GC/MS

“…Solvent desorption is carbon absorption followed by extraction via a versatile desorbing liquid [45]. Solvent desorption is compatible with high molecular mass and thermally unstable compounds and allows the preconcentration of high volumes of air [11].…”

“…Solvent desorption is compatible with high molecular mass and thermally unstable compounds and allows the preconcentration of high volumes of air [11]. The adoption of increased sample volume is a consequence of the decreased method sensitivity caused by sample dilution [11,45,46]. Evaporative loss of the sample is observed during the solvent reduction stage [46] and it is reported that only 1-5% of the sample is actually introduced into the GC system [47].…”

“…Nicotine detection in breath has been considered in environmental applications investigating environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and its impact on air quality of enclosed spaces [70]. The harmful constituents of tobacco smoke [71] and electronic cigarette (e-cig) vapor [72] are publicly reported and efforts measuring their concentrations for occupational workplace ETS exposures [45,73] have previously been examined using well developed sorbent based sampling and thermal desorption analytical techniques [43].…”