Presence of appreciable amounts of ethylene glycol, propylene glycol, and diethylene glycol in human urine of healthy subjects

Abstract

In a previous study, we found that appreciable amounts of ethylene glycol (EG), propylene glycol (PG), and diethylene glycol (DEG) were present in the blood of nonoccupational healthy humans. In this study, we measured the three glycols in the urine of healthy subjects by the same isotope dilution gas chromatography–mass spectrometry method, and found the concentrations to be much higher than those in blood. The concentrations of EG, PG, and DEG in urine samples (mean ± standard deviation) obtained from 23 subjects at random were 604 ± 360, 5,450 ± 9,290, and 59.0 ± 49.3 ng/ml, respectively. These values were 9.44, 30.1, and 5.31 times higher than those in whole blood samples, respectively. The much higher concentrations of the three glycols found in urine samples of nonoccupational healthy humans suggest that the three glycols, once incorporated into the human body, are rapidly excreted into urine. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of the presence of relatively high concentrations of EG, PG, and DEG in urine of healthy human subjects.