Measurement of volatile organic compounds in indoor air by a passive technique

Abstract

Experimental work is described which investigates the suitability of the Perkin Elmer type adsorbent tube packed with 'Tenax' for diffusive sampling of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in non-industrial indoor air. The tubes are analysed by thermal desorption and gas chromatography with flame ionisation detection. Laboratory and site studies show that the passive sampler can provide useful quantitative data about long-term (4 weeks) mean VOC concentrations in indoor air. The sampling procedure is sufficiently straightforward to allow non-technical personnel to carry out exposure of the tubes and costs of measurements can be minimised by using the postal service to deliver and return samplers. The technique has been used to measure total VOCs in the main bedroom and living room of 100 homes in the UK. Indoor concentrations range from 0.009 to 11.4 µg L -1 . There is no significant difference between the mean concentrations in the living room and bedroom which are 0.553 and 0.508 µg L -1 respectively. The mean indoor concentration of the VOC's measured is 16.5 times higher than that outdoors.

Diffusive Uptake Rates of Volatile Organic Compounds on Standard ATD Tubes for Environmental and Workplace Applications

“…Thus, the 7-day passive sampling efficiency can be calculated using the following empirical equation: Then the UR eff is calculated for a VOC by Equation (2). Equation (11) suggests that more volatile chemicals will have large loss during long-term passive sampling, which agreed with the literature [28,40,45].…”

The Use of Diffusive Samplers for the Measurement of Volatile Organic Compounds in the Indoor Air of 44 Homes in Southampton

“…For an exposure period of 4 weeks this gives a detection limit in the air for toluene of 2 and 0.2 Ìg m -3 , respectively. The sampler has been found to show good repeatability in both indoor [7] and outdoor [11] air, for example the relative standard deviation for toluene recorded by sets of 5 samplers exposed at 6 indoor locations for a period of 4 weeks was found to be in the range of 1.4-6.1% [7], whilst a range of 3-8% was found for toluene by samplers exposed outdoors for 5 separate 4 week exposure periods [11]. Table 1 shows the concentrations of the 6 compounds recorded in each room indoors and at the 4 outdoor locations.…”

“…An exposure period of 4 weeks was used, which has been found to be a suitable period for exposure of the samplers in homes [7]. For this survey samplers were packed with 200 mg of the adsorbent Tenax TA (60-to 80-mesh).…”

Use of Passive Dosimeters for Evaluation of the Quality of Indoor and Outdoor Air

“…[17,54,56] Benzene, acrylonitrile, styrene, 1,3-butadiene, toluene, decane, o-xylene, 1,2,4-trimethyl-benzene, m,p-xylene, benzyl alcohol, naphthalene, isoprene n-Hexane, benzene, 1-butanol, toluene, 1-hexanol, m-xylene, n-decane, cyclo hexane, 1,1,2-trichloroethylene, ethylbenzene, isopentane, 1,1,1-trichloro-Conversely, significant differences were observed for highly volatile ethane, styrene, n-octane, n-nonane Laboratory tests revealed good agreement between the experimen tal values of sampling rate and the theoretical values calculated from Fick's first law of diffusion for compounds of lower volatility.…”