1983 Volume 21 Issue 3 Pages 185-197
Commercial heterogeneous solvent products (e.g., paints, inks and ad-hesives) were collected nationwide in Japan in 1980. The vapor phase of the product containers were analyzed for volatile organic solvent constituents by means of FID-gas chromatography on two FS-WCOT (OV-101 and PEG-600) capillary columns. Of 657 products collected (358 paints, 62 inks, 165 abhesives and 72 others), 136 samples were not analyzable because 75 gave numerous peaks (presumably containing gasoline) and others had no volatile component. Among the remaining 521 samples (298 paints, 52 inks, 120 achesives and 51 others), 70 gave only one peak while others gave multiple peaks, indicating the mixture of solvents rather than single solvent was commonly used. Of the organic solvent components identified, toluene was the most popular solvent throughout paints (appearing in 80%), inks (62%), adhesives (51%) and others (65%), being detected in 70% of the total products analyzed. This popularity of toluene was followed by xylenes [predominantly m-(66%) and p-isomer (61%, )] in the case of paints, isopropyl alcohol (35%) in inks, and n-hexane (27%) and methyl ethyl ketone (23%) in adhesives, while benzene was not detected in any samples analyzed nor even in the gasoline-containing products. The concentrations of each solvent component in the vapor phases varied depending on the products, following a log-normal distribution. When the relative exposure risk of each of eight leading solvents of various chemical structures was calculated as the geometric mean concentration multiplied by the frequency of detection, n-hexane in adhesives was highest in the risk ranking while toluene and xylenes in paints scored much less because of low volatility.
