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Determination of BTEX in urine samples using cooling/heating-assisted headspace solid-phase microextraction

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Abstract

Excessive and uncontrolled exposures of the workers to benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX) have currently raised great concerns among industrial hygienist all over the world. Therefore, the effective monitoring of such exposures is assumed to be of prime importance. A cold fiber solid-phase microextraction device based on a cooling capsule as a cooling unit and CO2 as a coolant was applied to quantitatively analyze BTEX in aqueous samples. A gas chromatography with flame ionization detection was recruited to analyze the target analytes, which had been identified according to their retention times. Several factors such as coating temperature, extraction time and temperature, sample volume and sodium content were optimized. Two modes of extraction, i.e., headspace (HS) and headspace cold fiber (HS-CF) in SPME, were investigated and compared under optimized conditions. The results revealed that HS-CF-SPME has the most appropriate outcome for the extraction of BTEX from aqueous samples. Under the optimized conditions, the calibration curves were linear within the range of 0.2–500 ng ml−1 and the detection limits were between 0.02 and 0.07 ng ml−1.The intraday relative standard deviations was lower than about 10%. The method was successfully applied to the determination of BTEX in urine samples with good recovery.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Hamadan University of Medical Sciences for financial support (Grant No. 940118143) that made this research possible. The authors also extend their appreciation to Mr. Mohammad Faridan for providing assistance for the design and assembly of experimental setup.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center of Excellence for Occupational Health, School of Public Health, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, Iran

    Leila Tajik, Abdulrahman Bahrami & Farshid Ghorbani Shahna

  2. Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Lorestan University, Khoramabad, Iran

    Alireza Ghiasvand

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  1. Leila Tajik
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  2. Abdulrahman Bahrami
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  3. Alireza Ghiasvand
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  4. Farshid Ghorbani Shahna
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Correspondence to Abdulrahman Bahrami.

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Tajik, L., Bahrami, A., Ghiasvand, A. et al. Determination of BTEX in urine samples using cooling/heating-assisted headspace solid-phase microextraction. Chem. Pap. 71, 1829–1838 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11696-017-0176-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11696-017-0176-x

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