Recent advances in measuring exhaled breath and estimating exposure and body burden for volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
An improved portable breath measurement method has been developed that allows 1-min sampling times. The equipment has been successfully tested in field and chamber studies. Results of these studies suggest that breath levels following known exposures are predictable and reproducible across a small number of volunteers. The residence times in the body and the distribution in body compartments of several common air toxics have been determined. A simple four-compartment linear model is capable of fitting the observed data. The main parameters of the model include the fraction f of the parent compound exhaled under steady-state conditions and the residence times tau i, in the tau ith compartment. The values of these parameters for several VOCs and for the four body compartments (blood, vessel-rich tissues, vessel-poor tissues, and fat) are provided.
Wallace
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Atmospheric Research and Exposure Assessment Laboratory, Warrenton, VA 22091, USA.
Pellizzari
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D001822:Body Burden; D001944:Breath Tests; D004781:Environmental Exposure; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D015386:Hazardous Substances; D006801:Humans
D015386:Hazardous Substances