The possibilities will take your breath away: breath analysis for assessing environmental exposure.

Human breath is the gaseous exchange with the blood and thus contains trace organic contaminants and metabolites representative of environmental doses. Sampling and analysis of gaseous components in human breath offers a noninvasive and quick means of qualitatively and quantitatively assessing internalized doses of environmental contaminants. Although the humid and complex nature of breath is a challenge for detection of part-per-trillion to part-per-billion concentrations of environmental contaminants, recent advances in chemical analysis and instrumentation are allowing determination of environmental exposure and disease detection.