This research was performed in order to analyze microbial volatile organic compounds (MVOCs) as indicators of growing or hidden mold damage in indoor area of residence. More than 200 compounds have been reported as MVOCs. Among these MVOCs, 15 most often reported compounds are considered to be probable indicators for mold growing.
MVOCs, wide range volatile compounds classified into from VVOC to SVOC, require various modifications of operating conditions of the apparatus. There are no standard method for sampling and analyzing MVOCs. Canister sampling can accomodate both long and short term sampling of MVOCs and it does not make much noise during operation. From this point, canister sampling is more practical than the traditional solid phase adsorption methods followed by thermal desorption or solvent extraction of VOCs. After canister sampling, automated microscale purge & trap coupled with gas chromatography / mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis has been employed for the analysis of typical 15 compounds, including 2-MIB and geosmin. While a conventional system coupled glass beads trap with Tenax trap adopted in EPA TO-14 method for outdoor VOCs was restrictively successful, sufficient result was obtained using double traps piled glass beads with Tenax. The quantitation limit ranged between 0.0088 and 0.16 ng in both cryotrap systems.
The purpose and goal of this study was to examine the relation between the exposure to MVOCs owing to indoor mold growth and the prevalence of adverse health effects on the residents. The procedure has been tentatively applied in the context of a field study to measure the indoor MVOCs in several houses. 1-octen-3-ol detected in all houses ranged from 1.34-10.2 μg/m³, with an average in 6 houses of 4.09 μg/m³, and a slight amount of five MVOCs was also detected. The total MVOCs was detected at 2.43-16.4 μg/m³ with an average of 6.95 μg/m³.

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Due to the Great East Japan earthquake and related disasters, many people are forced to evacuate from their own houses to temporally housing areas. About 72,000 of the temporally houses are being or has been built after the disaster in the prefectures of Miyagi, Fukushima, Iwate and so on. Meanwhile, there are some foreign reports on victims who unfortunately became chemical intolerance because of exposure to formaldehyde in indoor air of temporally houses after hurricane or earthquake attacks. To prevent such secondary disaster, Miyagi prefecture obligates builders to report indoor air concentrations of formaldehyde, toluene, xylene, ethylbenzene and styrene with a frequency of one house per one order, corresponding to one house per 50-60 houses. However, detailed and in-depth survey should be required for the prevention of indoor air pollution problem, because chemicals other than the five compounds potentially cause adverse health disorders. Then, authors have voluntary conducted a field survey on the indoor air concentrations of chemicals at 6 sites in 5 houses of one temporally housing area at Miyagi in 20 June 2011, under the cooperation of Miyagi prefectural government. Target substances were 3 carbonyl compounds, 43 Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and TVOC (Total VOCs). The results showed the indoor air concentrations of chemicals whose indoor air guidelines were previously set were below the guideline levels at all sampling sites. However, TVOC concentrations ranged from 1700-3000μg/m³, 4-7.5 fold higher than the tentative guideline for TVOC. Unregulated chemicals by the governmental countermeasures contributed to such extraordinary high concentrations of TVOC in the tested temporally houses.

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