Material Emissions

The industrially manufactured materials surrounding us today may introduce health risks by emitting potentially toxic substances that are inhaled by occupants or absorbed via the skin. These include Volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds (VOCs/SVOCs) such as monomers, additives or solvents used in production of polymers, as well as coatings, paints and adhesives to name a few.

To minimize risks, there are statutory threshold values for material emissions provided by regulatory bodies, as well as standardized methods for the determination of material emissions.

Indoor Air monitoring is generally mainly performed in work areas to ensure that Occupational Safety and Health regulations are adhered to. Air analysis can also be performed to determine sources of undesirable odors in residential or vehicle interiors. Materials that are used indoors in buildings or in vehicles are typically tested individually, since they must meet standards and requirements for maximum allowable levels of emissions set by national or international regulatory bodies. Material emissions can be determined in environmental chambers under strictly controlled conditions by sampling and analyzing chamber air using TD tubes packed with sorbent for sampling and thermal desorption-GC-MS for analysis. An easier, far cheaper approach is to determine material emissions, or the emission potential, by direct thermal extraction in a TD instrument. The latter method is widely used for Automotive Testing and several standard methods are available.

GERSTEL thermal desorption (TD) systems transfer the collected or extracted analytes to the GC-MS(/MS) system for analysis. The GERSTEL TD systems are optimized for inertness and discrimination free transfer of both labile and high-boiling analytes, ensuring minimal analyte discrimination and accurate results.

When monitoring for formaldehyde, aldehydes and ketones in air, dinitrophenylhydrazine (DNPH) cartridges are used for air sampling and analyte stabilization by DNPH derivatization. The processing of the loaded cartridges is completely automated by the GERSTEL MultipurposeSampler (MPS) including elution and introduction to the HPLC system for a completely automated workflow. Depending on the size and configuration, the MPS can accommodate up to hundreds of samples, and the automation has been found to result in significant improvements of accuracy and reproducibility.