A comparative analysis of gas and liquid phase standard spiked solid sorbent tubes for the determination of volatile organic compounds in indoor air by TD-GC/MS

The optimization of analytical method for the thermal desorption of seven VOCs (volatile organic compounds) by TD-GC/MS (thermal desorption-gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer) with solid phase sorbent tube, and comparative analysis for the determination of VOCs plotted by standard sorbent tubes prepared using both gas phase and liquid phase materials were investigated. The result of paired t-test showed that a liquid phase standard sorbent tube method was in agreement with a gas phase standard sorbent tube method for six species of VOCs including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, o-, m-, and p-xylene except for styrene at the significance level (a=0.01), while the 15.6% of difference in response factor between both of gas phase and liquid phase standard plotting for the determination of styrene showed that both methods were significantly different at the significance level. Therefore, the liquid phase standard plotting method was employed to reduce erroneous data for the determination of styrene including BTEX. Under the optimized analytical method by liquid phase standard sorbent tube, recovery was between 100 +/- 5% for 7 species of VOCs, reproducibility ranged from 0.3 to 7.7%, and method detection limit (MDL) ranged from 0.01 mu g/m(3) for o-xylene to 0.27 mu g/m(3) for toluene. The optimized standard method was applied to determine VOCs VOCs from indoor air of of dormitory, one bedroom apartment, and a new car.