Determination of organic contaminants in residential indoor air using an adsorption-thermal desorption technique.

This field study evaluated the ability of a multi-sorbent sampling tube/thermal desorption technique to identify and to provide quantitative data on volatile organic contaminants in indoor air. Air samples, from 12 Canadian homes, were collected on multilayer sorbent cartridges and analyzed using Adsorption/Thermal Desorption coupled with Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry. The study included the identification and quantitation of 23 target compounds. Analysis of sorbent tubes fortified with these target compounds indicated that recoveries were greater than 70 percent and the precision was usually better than 15 percent. These organic compounds were found to be stable on the sorbent tubes for at least seven days. With some exceptions, the target compounds were usually detected at 1 to 10 micrograms/m3 in indoor air samples; other organics identified qualitatively were saturated hydrocarbons, unsaturated hydrocarbons, cyclic hydrocarbons, substituted aromatics, oxygenates, some halogenates and cyclic species such as camphenes/pinenes and carenes.