2020 Volume 59 Issue 1 Pages 27-32
In order to highlight the advantages of personal chemical exposure sampling methods for assessing exposure risks in manufacturing settings, an easy-to-operate layered passive sampler based on activated carbon fiber （ACF） is developed in this study. Experiments are conducted to determine the effectiveness of ACF for absorbing toluene organic solvent vapor, which is widely used in Japanese manufacturing, as well as the retention ability of the sampling device. Calculated sampling rate （SR） was 1.2 ml/min （4.5 ng / （ppm· min））. Limit of quantitation （LOQ） of toluene in the desorbed solvent was 2.00 µg/sample, lower than the value when 1/10 of TLV was sampled for 4 hours. The recovery rates of the spike and recovery test are 94％ or more, and the recovery rates of 8th day on storage tests with a sampled toluene of 20 ppm was 99.8％ stored at 4 ℃. The collected toluene amount was constant under the condition of 15-30 ℃ of temperature, 33-70％ of relative humidity, 0.1-0.3 m/s of wind velocity in the experiment of indoor environmental condition. The above results suggest that sampling is possible within a certain range of environmental conditions examined in this experiment. Furthermore, since there is little risk of this layered sampler coming in contact with the factory equipment, this sampler is suitable for sampling in narrow spaces and for various workspace. For future, it is important to experiment with or organic solvents other than toluene. These results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed personal exposure sampling method.
