REAL-TIME MEASUREMENTS OF VOC EXPOSURE AND HEART RATE VARIABILITY IN INDOOR AND OUTDOOR ENVIRONMENTS

While various VOCs are known to show neurotoxic effects, the detailed mechanisms of VOCs onautonomic nervous system have not been fully understood partly because objective and quantitativemeasures to indicate neural abnormalities are still under development. Nevertheless, heart ratevariability (HRV) has been recently proposed as an indicative measure of the autonomic defect. In thisstudy, we used HRV as an indicative measure of the autonomic defect to relate their values to thepersonal concentrations of VOCs measured by a real-time VOC monitor. The measurements wereconducted to 7 healthy subjects for 24 hours. The results showed HF powers were decreased for 6subjects when the TVOC concentration changes were high, indicating the suppression ofparasympathetic nervous induced by the exposure to VOCs. The present study indicated thesereal-time monitoring was useful to characterize the trends of VOC exposures and their effects onautonomic nervous system. Application of the present method is expected to lead to diagnosis and curefor the patients such as MCS and sick building syndrome in the future.