Abstract
O-(2,3,4,5,6-Pentafluorobenzyl)hydroxylamine(PFBHA), is known to react with aldehydes to produce oxime derivatives. Due to this chemical property and the stability of the products formed, PFBHA could be practically used in sampling devices to measure aldehydes in exhaled breath. In this study, we aimed to develop a novel active sampler to measure aldehydes in the human exhaled gas, using a silica gel tube which had been previously applied for the sampling of indoor aldehydes. A novel silica gel based sampler was created by filling a glass tube with PFBHA-coated silica gel. The collection efficiency, lower limit of detection, lower limit of quantification, repeatability, recovery and storage stability of the novel sampler were examined for 12 aldehydes,: formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acrolein, propanal, butanal, pentanal, 2-methylpentanal, hexanal, heptanal, octanal, benzaldehyde and nonanal. Our results showed that the novel sampler had a good efficiency for sampling, good repeatability with 5.3 % relative standard deviation, and good recovery with 90-116 % in each test. The lower limit of quantification for each aldehyde was in the range of 1.1-3.7 ng/100 mL in exhaled breath. Moreover, this developed silica gel tube was practically applied to exhaled gas from healthy volunteers and prostate cancer patients, and useful findings were successfully obtained. Thus, PFBHA-coated silica gel tubes can be used as sampling devices for human exhaled aldehydes.
