Electronic noses for monitoring benzene occupational exposure in biological samples of Egyptian workers

Abstract

Objectives: Benzene is commonly emitted in several industries, leading to widespread environmental and occupational exposure hazards. While less toxic solvents have been substituted for benzene, it is still a component of petroleum products and is a trace impurity in industrial products resulting in continued higher occupational exposures in industrial settings in developing countries. Materials and Methods: We investigated the potential use of an electronic nose (e-nose) to monitor the headspace volatiles in biological samples from benzene-exposed Egyptian workers and non-exposed controls. The study population comprised 150 non-smoking male workers exposed to benzene and an equal number of matching non-exposed controls. We determined biomarkers of benzene used to estimate exposure and risk including: benzene in exhaled air and blood; and its urinary metabolites such as phenol and muconic acid using gas chromatography technique and a portable e-nose. Results: The average benzene concentration measured in the ambient air of the workplace of all studied industrial settings in Alexandria, Egypt; was 97.56±88.12 μg/m 3 (range: 4.69-260.86 μg/m 3 ). Levels of phenol and muconic acid were significantly (p < 0.001) higher in both blood and urine of benzene-exposed workers as compared to non-exposed controls. Conclusions: The e-nose technology has successfully classified and distinguished benzene-exposed workers from non-exposed controls for all measured samples of blood, urine and the exhaled air with a very high degree of precision. Thus, it will be a very useful tool for the low-cost mass screening and early detection of health hazards associated with the exposure to benzene in the industry.

Application and Uses of Electronic Noses for Clinical Diagnosis on Urine Samples: A Review

“…The following sections provide an overview of the state-of-the-art of the application of electronic noses for the analysis of urine samples by classifying those applications depending on the target investigated, thus including the discrimination of bacteria cultures (Section 2.2) [49,50,51,52], or the detection of urinary tract infections (Section 2.3) [53,54,55,56,57,58], cancer diseases (Section 2.4) [59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66], diabetes (Section 2.5) [67,68], kidney diseases (Section 2.6) [69,74], bowel diseases (Section 2.7) [70,71,72] and exposure to toxic agents (Section 2.8) [73] (reference [74] wasn’t included in Table 1 since it refers to breath analysis).…”

“…Mohamed et al [73] investigated the use of an electronic nose system to monitor the headspace of biological samples in order to distinguish between exposed and non-exposed Egyptian workers. Blood, urine and exhaled air were collected after an eight-hour working shift, to assure the best results.…”

Electronic nose for tracking different types of leukaemia: future prospects in diagnosis

“…Exposure to benzene at high concentrations may cause decreases in the numbers of erythrocytes, leucocytes and/or thrombocytes in workers blood, leading to the development of myelodysplasia and eventually to one of the four types: acute lymphocytic leukaemia (ALL), acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) or chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) [3,4]. We have recently employed the electronic nose (e-nose) technology for monitoring workers occupational exposure to benzene in their blood, urine and the exhaled air with a very high degree of precision [5].…”

Mitochondrial DNA copy number and cytogenetic damage among fuel filling station attendants

“…Benzene is metabolized in the human body to phenols, which can be detected in the urine of exposed workers (Mohamed et al, 2013).…”