Determination of solvent thinner components in human body fluids by capillary gas chromatography with trapping at low...

A simple and sensitive method is presented for determination of solvent thinner components in human body fluids by capillary gas chromatography (GC) with a low oven temperature for trapping headspace vapor components. After heating a blood or urine sample containing ethyl acetate, benzene, butan-1-ol, toluene, butyl acetate, isoamyl acetate and ethylbenzene (internal standard) in a 7.5 ml vial at 90 degrees C for 30 min, 5 ml of headspace vapor were drawn into a glass syringe. All vapor was introduced through an injection port in the splitless mode into a DB-624 medium-bore capillary column at a 5 degrees C oven temperature for trapping the volatile compounds, and the oven temperature was programmed up to 110 degrees C for their detection by GC. These conditions gave sharp peaks, a good separation of each peak and low background noise for both whole blood and urine samples. As much as 3.58-55.1 and 3.52-57.9% of the six compounds, which had been added to vials, could be introduced to the GC instrument for whole blood and urine, respectively. The intra-day RSD values in terms of the introduction rate (net recovery) of the six compounds in whole blood and urine samples were < or = 8.1%. The calibration curves showed linearity in the range 0.78-400 ng per 0.5 ml whole blood or urine. The detection limits were 0.5-5 ng per 0.5 ml. The data on toluene in post mortem blood in an actual case are also presented.