ABSTRACT
Air pollution is not restricted to open air areas. High concentrations of petroleum-based air pollutants may occur, such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX), in indoor environments. The BTEX, even in low concentrations, of the order of parts per billion (ppb), cause human health problems. The objective of this work was to apply a technique of measurement of BTEX, at ppb level, using only eight hours of sampling in an indoor environment. To this end, passive tube samplers were used associated with analysis by thermal desorption, gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. The calibration method applied to this analytical system was also presented. The use of this method allowed the quantification of BTEX in a combustion engines research laboratory, at concentrations of 4.64, 7.87, 10.47 and 21.36 ppb, respectively. These results are close to the range found by other indoor studies in Brazil. The evaluation of BTEX in the combustion laboratory, besides it only takes 16 hours, considering the sampling and the analysis procedures, confirmed the sensitivity of the methodology used.
Keywords:
air pollutants; gas chromatography; mass spectrometry; direct injection; passive sampling
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