LAUSR

Building related health effects are frequently observed. Several factors have been listed as possible causes including temperature, humidity, light conditions, presence of particulate matter and microorganisms or volatile organic compounds. To be able to link exposure to specific volatile organic compounds to building related health effects powerful and comprehensive analytical methods are required. For this purpose, we developed an active air sampling method that utilizes dual-bed tubes loaded with TENAX-TA and Carboxen-1000 adsorbents to sample two parallel air samples of 4-L each. For the comprehensive volatile organic compounds analysis, an automated thermal desorption comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography high resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry method was developed and used. It allowed targeted analysis of approximately 90 known volatile organic compounds with relative standard deviations below 25 % for the vast majority of target volatile organic compounds. It also allowed semi-quantification (no matching standards) of numerous non-target air contaminants, using the same data set. The non-target analysis workflow included peak finding, background elimination, feature alignment, detection frequency filtering and tentative identification. Application of the workflow to air samples from 68 indoor environments at a large hospital complex resulted in a comprehensive volatile organic compound characterization, including 178 single compounds and 13 hydrocarbon groups. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.