SERUM LEVELS OF VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS IN PATIENTS WITH SICK BUILDING SYNDROME SYMPTOMS

摘要

We developed a method for measuring volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in serum using a headspace-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. Stable isotope-labeled internal standards for each of the selected analytes were used to improve analysis precision. The method was sensitive with detection limits between 0.1 and 1 ng in 1 mL of serum for all of the analytes. We measured serum VOCs concentrations of 18 patients with symptoms of sick building syndrome and 32 healthy controls. Three of the most often detected VOCs were p-dichlorobenzene, xylene, and toluene in these 50 subjects. Although the differences in the concentrations of these VOCs were not statistically significant between the patients and the control, it was revealed that the patients had lower serum levels of VOCs than the controls. We conducted follow-up investigations on two female patients who complained of strong symptoms.