Tài liệu Drugs and Poisons in Humans - A Handbook of Practical Analysis (Part 16) doc

1.7

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005

II.1.7 Toluene, benzene, xylene

and styrene

by Xiao-Pen Lee and Keizo Sato

Introduction

Toluene, benzene, xylene and styrene are being widely used for chemical product materials,

solvents and constituents of adhesives and paints, and thus sometimes cause poisoning inci￾dents by inhaling their gas at chemical product-manufacturing factories. Th e abuse of thinner

solvents, containing toluene, benzene and xylene, is now a social problem especially for young

people. Th ere are many crimes and poisoning incidents involving the thinner solvent abuse.

Recently, styrene leaking from new building materials is an object of interest, because it causes

the sick house syndrome.

Th e above four solvents are rapidly absorbed into human body by inhalation, per os

and percutaneously to cause various disturbances, such as suppression of the central nervous

system. In addition, benzene and styrene are being regarded as carcinogenic compounds.

For analysis of toluene, benzene, xylene and styrene, the conventional GC methods with

packed columns are being used [1–10]. In this chapter, a method of their analysis for human

blood using headspace wide-bore capillary GC is presented.

Reagents and their preparation

• Standard solutions: toluene, benzene or each isomer a

of xylene of special grade is dissolved

in methanol to prepare each 1 mg/mL solution.

• Internal standard (IS) solution: aniline of special grade is dissolved in methanol to give

10 mg/mL solution.

GC conditions

Column: an Rtx-BAC2 wide-bore capillary column (30 m × 0.53 mm i. d., fi lm thickness

2.0 µm, Restek, Bellefonte, PA, USA).

GC conditions; instrument: a Shimazu GC-14B gas chromatograph (Shimadzu Corp.,

Kyoto, Japan); detector: FID; column (oven) temperature: 30 °C (1 min) → 15 °C/min → 240 °C

injection and detector temperature: 240 °C; carrier gas: He; its fl ow rate: 5.0 mL/min.