SURVEY ON THE ACCURACY OF INDOOR AIR QUALITY ANALYTICAL METHODS USING DNPH CARTRIDGE

In recent years, volatile organic compounds have caused chemical sensitivity by increasing indoor airpollutant concentrations. In order to solve the problem, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare ofJapanese Government established the guideline values for indoor air concentrations for 13 compounds,such as formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, toluene and so on. However it is not clear that accuracy of themeasurement method for volatile organic compounds in indoor air is sufficient enough to judge theindoor air quality of the room to the guidelines.This study aimed at investigating accuracy of the analytical method using DNPH cartridge for indoorformaldehyde and acetaldehyde concentrations. Sample cartridges of the blank, standard and indoorair were prepared. The 5 kinds of DNPH cartridges were used to analyze dispersion of the test results,and the samples for laboratory tests using HPLC were sent to 11 laboratories. Since the CV valueswere under 20%, the dispersion was not too large. The dispersions found in data were considered to becaused by accuracy of cartridges and analyzing performance of each laboratory. We recognized thatdata for indoor concentrations by DNPH cartridge were fairly dispersed.