Determination of solvent thinner components in human body fluids by capillary gas chromatography with trapping at low oven temperature for headspace samples

Abstract

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 °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 °C oven temperature for trapping the volatile compounds, and the oven temperature was programmed up to 110 °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 ≤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.