An optimized method for determination of benzene in exhaled air by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry using solid phase microextraction as a sampling technique

The determination of benzene in exhaled air has contributed for the increase in the use of breath analysis in biological monitoring. This paper describes SPME as a sampling technique for determining benzene in exhaled air by GC–MS. A system was developed to generate a gaseous benzene standard by a permeation method to accomplish the breath analyses. The method presented good resolution, repeatability (the mean of %RSD values for intra-day measurements was 6.3), sensitivity (2.4 and 3.1 ppb for LOD and LOQ, respectively), and linearity of response (R2 = 0.994). After optimizing the conditions, analyses of real samples were performed on two groups (exposed and not exposed to benzene). The results presented an average of 8.2 ppb for the control group and 25.3 ppb for the exposed group.