Screening of volatile organic compounds in river sediment.

Abstract

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as trichloroethene, toluene and xylenes have been reported to be detected from river water and sediment, because a part of VOCs charged into river can be distributed to river sediment. Fifty-three common VOCs in water have been simultaneously determined with good accuracy and precision by gas chromatography - mass spectrometry (GC/MS) with headspace method as well as purge-and-trap method. However, simultaneous determination methods for the VOCs in sediment have not been established. Several GC or GOMS methods have been reported to determine some VOCs in sediment, purge-and-trap, distillation, headspace and solvent extraction. Among them headspace GC/MS method appears to be the most appropriate method for screening the VOCs in sediments, because of its simplicity in analytical procedure. Hewitt et al. have reported that headspace method gave no statistically different results from purge-and-trap method for GC/MS determination of four VOCs in soil. Voice and Kolb have reported that headspace GC method gave better results to determine nine VOCs in soil than purge-and-trap method or solvent extraction method followed by headspace. However, headspace analysis of some VOCs in sediments could give insufficient recoveries. This is because VOCs adsorb to sediment. To improve their low recoveries from sediment,more » we have previously used a stable isotope-labeled compound as an internal standard to determine eight chlorinated VOCs. However, this method is not proper for determining simultaneously as many as 53 VOCs with various physical properties. Therefore, we investigate headspace GC/MS method with standard addition method for simultaneous screening of them in sediment. In this paper, we describe effects of a few headspace conditions on the VOC recoveries from sediment, and present screening results of the VOCs in sediments from mouths of rivers and a port in Niigata, Japan. 17 refs., 3 figs., 3 tabs.« less