Analysis of chloroform in blood.

A gas chromatographic method for the analysis of chloroform in blood has been developed in which the anaesthetic agent is extracted into carbon disulphide and trichlorethylene is used as an internal standard. Injection of the extract into a chromatograph resulted in a chloroform peak eluted after 165 s and a trichloroethylene peak at 310 s, both of which are much later than the solvent peak which is completely eluted in 100 s. The mean percentage recovery of chloroform from blood in the range of 1.4--38.12 mg/100 ml was 98.8+/-1.32. This is an improvement on all previous methods described for the estimation of chloroform.