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Simultaneous determination of volatile organic compounds with a wide range of polarities in urine by headspace solid‐phase microextraction coupled to gas chromatography/mass spectrometry
Author(s) -
Song HanNa,
Kim Chong Hyeak,
Lee WonYong,
Cho SungHee
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
rapid communications in mass spectrometry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.528
H-Index - 136
eISSN - 1097-0231
pISSN - 0951-4198
DOI - 10.1002/rcm.7827
Subject(s) - chemistry , chromatography , solid phase microextraction , detection limit , btex , mass spectrometry , gas chromatography–mass spectrometry , gas chromatography , ethylbenzene , extraction (chemistry) , solid phase extraction , volatile organic compound , benzene , environmental chemistry , analytical chemistry (journal) , organic chemistry
Rationale Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are ubiquitous environmental pollutants that have a high vapor pressure at room temperature. Some VOCs have been classified as carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), because they can bind to DNA and cause cell mutations. Therefore, monitoring of VOCs in human urine is very important to evaluate the correlation between exposure to VOCs and human disease. Methods We have developed an improved analytical method for the simultaneous determination of VOCs with a wide range of polarities in human urine samples by headspace solid‐phase microextraction (HS‐SPME) coupled to gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). In the improved method, a bi‐polar carboxen‐polydimethylsiloxane (CAR/PDMS) fiber was used for the optimized extraction of 15 VOCs with a wide range of polarities, including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes (BTEX), alkylbenzenes, cresols, and naphthalene, in human urine samples. Extracted VOCs from the human urine were effectively separated by GC using a mid‐polarity column (DB‐35, 35% phenylmethylpolysiloxane) and monitored by MS using extracted ion monitoring (EIM) mode. Results Under the optimized method, the linearity of the calibration curves was greater than 0.993. The limits of detection (LODs) at a signal‐to‐noise (S/N) ratio of 3 were 0.3–0.6 ng/mL. The coefficients of variation were in the range of 0.1–9.7% for within‐day variation and 0.2–14.2% for day‐to‐day variation. Conclusions The method was shown to be rapid and simple for the simultaneous determination of VOCs with a wide range of polarities in human urine and it could be applied to monitoring and to biomedical investigations to check exposure to VOCs. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.