Characterization of standardized breath sampling for off-line field use

Due to several sources of potential variability associated with exhaled breath bag sampling procedures for off-line analysis, the Respiration Collector for in vitro Analysis (ReCIVA) sampler was developed. Although designed to improve upon several pitfalls of sampling with exhaled breath bags, the ReCIVA remains a minimally studied research tool. In this manuscript, several attributes of the ReCIVA sampler are investigated among three individual tests, such as background contamination, control software version, performance of different adsorbent tubes, duplicate sample production, and comparison to exhaled breath bags. The data shows greater than a 58% reduction in background siloxanes can be achieved with submersion of ReCIVA masks in ethyl alcohol or baking the masks at a high temperature (200 °C). The results illustrate the ReCIVA control software version plays a key role in the flow rates applied to thermal desorption (TD) tubes. Using exhaled isoprene as a representative analyte, the data suggest duplicate samples among ReCIVA pump banks can be achieved using two different thermal desorption tubes, Tenax TA and Tenax/Carbograph 5TD, when using an updated control software and manually calibrating the ReCIVA pumps to uniform flow rates (Tenax p = 0.3869, 5TD p = 0.3131). Additionally, using the updated control software and manual ReCIVA flow calibration, the data suggest the ReCIVA can produce statistically similar results among TD tube types (p = 0.3824) and compared to standard exhaled breath bags (p = 0.1534). Collectively, these results establish a method for manually calibrating the flow of the ReCIVA device to allow for the most consistent results. These data support further experimentation into the use of the ReCIVA sampler for exhaled breath research.